My Savior and I

Reflected light passing through air,

through membrane and humor,

on retina falls;

sensory cells transform that light

to signals electric

for optic nerve travel

into my brain, where other cells

turn upside-down pictures

to images clear;

and I can see, all un-amazed,

the bright forms and colors

in flawless 3-D.

No light reflects, no signals pass

from me to the Watcher

who fashioned my eyes.

His presence fills heaven and earth,

His pow'r energizes

the works of His mind.

He knows my thoughts, He holds my heart,

He judges my motives

with mercy and love.

For I am His and He is mine

through uncounted eons -- 

my Savior and I.

MNA

9/13/2022

The Grace of Salvation

Several weeks ago, Linda and I had the great privilege of attending a conference of fellow Christians up in Grand Rapids, where we heard some wonderful preaching by a number of seminary professors connected with the Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. The messages were both informative and thrilling, as they were tied together by the theme of the conference: The Grace of Salvation.

Dr. Joel Beeke, President of the seminary, gave the opening message. His text, fittingly, was what theologians call the “proto-evangel” or the first gospel promise uttered by the Creator after His creatures sinned against Him: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” (Gen. 3:15)

Dr. Beeke characterized Genesis 3 in several ways, calling it the Bible’s BLACK chapter, in that it explains mankind’s fall into sin, God’s curse, and the pall of judgment that hangs over us all because of Adam and Eve’s rebellion. It is also the Bible’s RED chapter, in that it explains that blood atonement will always be necessary to cover and wash away sin’s guilt, by describing the divine act of clothing His guilty creatures with the skins of slaughtered animals, in place of their own faulty act of making aprons out of dead leaves. Finally, Genesis 3 is especially the Bible’s WHITE chapter, giving the gracious hope of salvation in the 15th verse, the proto-evangel.

The surprising point Dr. Beeke brings out of this text, to me, was mentioning the fact that it begins with God’s promise to BRING ENMITY between the offspring of the serpent and the offspring of the woman! We are used to the concept of God bringing love and peace into the world, but how often do we see him as a bringer of ANIMOSITY or HOSTILITY, for that is what ENMITY means? His first gospel promise is to make enemies out of the serpent and the woman, between the serpent’s children and the children of the woman. 

Understandably we might ask HOW this could happen, since Adam and Eve had just joined the devil’s team in their rebellion against God. And that is just the point. Humanly speaking, we love being on Satan’s team and doing the will of the world, flesh and devil. But God was pledging Himself to someday and somehow SPLIT UP this happy, sinful family! 

The Seed of the woman would come in the future to crush the serpent’s head, a person the serpent would have no power to kill in the long run. The serpent’s ultimate ENEMY would ensure that His people’s hatred would no longer be directed toward their Maker, but toward their TRUE enemy. For the new birth given to believers in Jesus Christ always brings with it a hatred of and hostility toward all sin and unholiness. If I fail to feel this holy hatred toward sin, especially the remaining sin in ME, I must question whether I might not truly be saved…

Even as the serpent’s descendents nip at our heels and seek to slow us down in the Christian race, the worst they can do is bruise God’s children. Like Saul of Tarsus, they are merely “kicking at the goads.” Beeke goes on to observe that the Church’s most blessed times in history have always been those when we faced the fiercest conflicts. In fact, the Lord is in control ultimately over all of Satan’s attacks, even in orchestrating the death of Christ on the cross. And our God only uses Satanic attacks against us, to empty us of our dependence on fleshly strength and make room for more of Christ!

Dr. Michael Barrett has been teaching Old Testament at the college and seminary levels for many, many years. His address at the conference concerned the Old Testament’s Day of Atonement and how it points us to the perfect Mediator who came in the person of Jesus Christ. Dr. Barrett’s excitement about the images of Christ depicted by the object lessons in the O.T. is very infectious, to the extent that I went and purchased one of his books entitled Beginning with Moses: Finding Christ in the Old Testament. 

Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, was important for many reasons. It was a day of sober reflection, sorrow for sin, and the pursuit of God’s mercy. The holiness or “set-apart-ness” of the priest who represented the people before God’s throne, represented by the ark of the covenant, was paramount on this one day of the year. Even though the Tabernacle, and later the Temple, showed the people that God was dwelling in their midst, those consecrated buildings also demonstrated the separation of God from sin, and the need of a go-between, a mediator. For only a set-apart class of people could minister in the structure of the tent of meeting, and only the one high priest could actually enter the “throneroom” of God Himself, and only once each year.

Dr. Barrett also emphasized that Aaron’s high-priestly garments had to be ritually removed from him before he entered the Holy of Holies. He wore only a simple linen garment for that journey into God’s immediate presence. This undressing symbolized the humiliation of the Messiah who was to come among men, stripped of His glorious heavenly garments, and clothed in human flesh in order to represent His people before the God they had offended by their sin. This was a clear image of the ultimate High Priest, the Seed of the woman who would finally do away with sin and free His people from their spiritual enemies.

Yom Kippur also teaches us that sinners can only approach God on the basis of a Sinless Sacrifice. The two goats used in this salvation drama each had a unique role to play. The slain animal had its blood drained into a bowl, to be carried past the veil and into the Most Holy Place. This goat had to have no defects – a perfect, sinless sacrifice, again depicting the Savior who was to come. Its blood was sprinkled onto the lid of the ark of the covenant, also known as the “mercy seat.” 

Inside that ark were the Ten Commandments – the Law which insists that the guilty must die for their sin. So long as that Law was covered by the mercy seat, the guilty would be safe. But the blood of their substitute must be applied there every year. The other goat was used as the scapegoat, onto which the priest would transfer the sins of the people, after which the animal was driven away and out into the wild. This depicted the removal of our guilt through confession, repentance and forgiveness – what theologians call EXPIATION. 

Notice that the scapegoat cannot be released without the sacrificial one being slain in place of the guilty sinners. This again points us to how Christ fulfilled the dual requirements of the law: He bore the guilt of His sinful people to the cross and took it outside the city, bearing our curse and setting us free by His perfect sacrifice. The goat being put to death in the place of the guilty ones, acted as the PROPITIATION for the people, turning away the wrath of a just and holy God. Both propitiation and expiation are acts of divine GRACE, granting God’s mercy while maintaining His perfect justice. And because our sinless Substitute was raised from the dead, His atoning blood, wherever it is applied by faith, brings salvation, and the promise of sins forgiven forever!

Dr. Jonathan Gibson is an associate professor of Old Testament at Westminster Seminary. His message at the conference concerned “The Christ of Grace” and was based on the Savior’s words from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Without the Christ of grace, there’d have been no grace of Christ to give you and me. John wrote that the Word made flesh came among us, “full of grace and truth.” Amy Carmichael likened Jesus to a cup of sweet water. “When the cup is jolted, only sweet water is jolted out of it.” And the passion of Jesus, His mistreatment, sleepless night of prayer, humiliation, beating, scourging, dragging the cross to Calvary, and finally, His being nailed to the tree, were the worst joltings imaginable.

Dr. Gibson referred to Christ’s prayer as an Inspired Prayer, as it was based on the Scriptures themselves. Specifically, He fulfilled Isaiah 53:12, “For He bore the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” Although all that He was experiencing was at the hands of brutal, sinful mockers and murderers, Jesus prayed for His enemies. That their crime would not be held against them in the final judgment.

And that crime, Dr. Gibson pointed out, was an Incalculable Crime. “They know not what they do,” wasn’t a phrase that excused them from the guilt of what they were doing. But it meant that the WEIGHT and SEVERITY of this crime was beyond their ability to reason. They could not claim any such thing as INVINCIBLE ignorance, as it’s defined by the Catholic church. For they surely ought to have known who Jesus was by virtue of His character, His miracles and His teachings. Peter would later preach to the Jews: “I know that you did it out of ignorance, as did also your rulers. But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled” (Acts 3:17-18). They did it out of an ignorance they ought to have overcome. A willful ignorance, used by the Lord to fulfill His redemption promise.

Jesus’ prayer also speaks of an Indestructible Relationship. When Jesus cried out on the cross later, “My God! Why have You forsaken Me?” that feeling of forsakenness was certainly experienced by Christ as to His human nature, which was vicariously bearing the sins of His people. Dr. Gibson taught that “Heaven was at no point emptied of the presence of God the Son.” As Athanasius the great church father said, “The Word was not entirely circumscribed by the physical body of Christ.” The Father was never unleashing His anger at the Divine Son, otherwise He would never have listened to this prayer for forgiveness. There could not have been any “cross-purposes” among the Godhead even when Christ hung there on the cross.

The message also mentioned an Incredible Substitution. Only Christ could have prayed this prayer, for, even as He asked forgiveness for His enemies, He was paying the price FOR that forgiveness by shedding His own blood. His suffering was substituted for ours, and even for a literal man the Bible names as Barabbas, which means “son of a father.” All of us, as sons of our father Adam, needed a substitute to pay for our sins – the ultimate “Son of the Father.”

Jesus’ prayer was also an Indistinct Prayer. The words “them” and “they” are unspecific, implying that they are a universal plea for those who are willfully ignorant, but still condemned. All guilty sinners who are willing, can “crawl into that THEM,” and be forgiven of their sins. And, finally, Jesus was praying an Invincible Prayer. It became effectively answered when the Jews cried out in Acts 2, “Men and Brethren, what shall we do?” Their hearts were cut to the quick at Peter’s preaching and the Holy Spirit’s regenerating power. Thousands were added to the fledgling church as a direct answer to the Savior’s gracious prayer from the cross. This was truly the Christ of Grace!

Dr. Adriaan Neele is vice president of Puritan Seminary. He lectured on the subject of “Saving Grace: Regeneration and Faith.” Using the familiar passage Eph. 2:1-10, Dr. Neele asked us the question: “Has God’s grace changed me?...and Do I cherish it as God’s GIFT?” God’s grace, he told us, is both necessary and transformative. The passage in Ephesians mentions the past, the present, and the future. It addresses us personally: “YOU are saved.” And it shows what you are saved FROM, saved BY, and saved FOR.

Verses 1-3 remind believers of what we once were, what we have been saved FROM, and call for humility, in that we who have been saved, were no better than anyone else. We all began as “children of wrath.” Under the divine curse because of our sin. Verses 4-6 begin with that wonderful phrase: “BUT GOD…” The one who had us under His curse, rightfully so, is also one who is “rich in mercy” and motivated by a “great love” to make dead sinners ALIVE together with Christ! This passage outlines both our desperate sin-cursed PAST, and our living PRESENT, thanks to a gracious, merciful, loving Savior God. We are, even now, raised up and seated with our risen Savior in the heavenly places. 3 times Paul uses that great word: TOGETHER.

Verse 7 begins with “That…” which points to a reason for what came before. We have been joined savingly to Christ THAT God might show the exceeding riches of His grace “in the ages to come.” In the FUTURE, God has planned for us who are joined to Christ to become prized exhibits of His grace in the kindness He showed to us in Christ Jesus. God will put us on display for HIS glory, in effect, BOASTING about the exceeding riches of His grace. And the passage goes on to show one and all that it is ONLY God who deserves to boast of our salvation:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” We were dead in our trespasses and sins. We had no power to enter into union with Jesus Christ. It was God who had to perform a divine work of creation in us so that we would joyfully believe in Christ, and through that gift of faith, be eternally joined to Him. This is what we are saved BY.

And finally, verse 10 tells what we’ve been saved FOR: we are His “works of art,” Dr. Neele said, called to “do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic, 6:8). Through our good works we are to be witnesses to the world “that they might see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). This is both a passive and active ministry, for God planned beforehand that we’d be assigned these works (passive), “that we should walk in them” (active). So the grace that called us, and the faith that saves us, go on to energize our obedience. And our transformed lives are to find their source in Christ, all for the Father’s eternal GLORY!

I’m going to end this lesson with my notes from Dr. David McWilliams’ message: “A Miracle of Grace: Justification.” His main text was Romans 3:19-31. How can a person become right with God, if human righteousness is required to line up perfectly with His? This passage begins by summing up Paul’s argument that the entire world stands guilty before our Maker. In His divine courtroom not a man or woman or child dares to open his or her mouth. Do we see this truth as clearly in our own hearts, McWilliams asks, as we see it in the pages of the Bible? This is the problem with much of the Bible’s truth: we fail to make it personally apply to us. Perfect righteousness is what our King and Judge requires from each of us, but what none of us is able to provide. The Law of God reveals our sin to us, but cannot save those who fail to fully obey it!

Secondly, Dr. McWilliams taught that God Himself provided the righteousness that we, in our sin, could not. God could not merely set His perfect law aside. His holy standard for us HAD to be fully met, or else NO ONE could have ever been saved. And praise Him, verse 22 reveals that there is a justifying righteousness given freely TO all and ON all who trust in Jesus Christ. This is a righteousness for us that is APART FROM the law. A righteousness revealed in the gospel, a righteousness IMPUTED to believers by grace and through faith.

This justifying righteousness given to believing sinners, is justifying GRACE, given FREELY through the redemption “that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood (Christ’s blood shed on the cross)” – vv 24-25. This gracious, freely given righteousness was provided in a way that was consistent with God’s own character. Amazingly, it was the same principle that CONDEMNED guilty sinners, that God used to SAVE them! 

Four elements of this miracle of justification are in view here: a. The offense, b. The estrangement from God, c. The offender’s debt, and d. The substitutionary sacrifice. God Himself created the reality that made substitutionary atonement possible through Jesus Christ. O.T. were forgiven based on their anticipation of Christ’s sacrifice. Their history and their rituals taught them that God could not unilaterally pardon their sin debt. He could only re-direct the punishment his justice required. And when we see what Jesus suffered, we learn that the claims of justice were NEVER set aside! Those claims were met through the blood of our Substitute.

The sins of Jesus Christ’s followers have been paid for just as thoroughly as if we’d paid for them in Hell for all eternity. Jesus bore our legal obligations, and fully paid our debt, so that we would be saved freely by God’s grace. His life was taken – His death was required – because our sin was an attack on our Creator, the giver of life. It is a poisonous and deceiving doctrine of atonement – the modern idea that Christ’s atonement can leave out the concepts of substitution and propitiatory sacrifice. Without those truths, we are left without the hope of divine forgiveness. Jesus God’s Son died and shed His blood in our place so that God could forgive us.

As we learned when we discussed the Day of Atonement, God’s grace in salvation rests on both propitiation and expiation. To stand before the Holy One justly, clothed in perfect righteousness, our alienation from God and His just wrath had to be turned aside. Because our perfect Substitute was sinlessly righteous, those who are joined to Him by faith are graciously forgiven, by the righteous Judge who “looks on Him, and pardons me.” God’s grace of salvation allowed our sinful record to be put to death along with Jesus on that cross, so that God would remember it against us NO MORE!

The Grace of our Salvation is certainly a miraculous exchange. A plan of supernatural genius conceived and agreed upon in eternity past by the eternal Three-in-One. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit made it possible for their people to sing through all eternity, “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound! That saved a wretch like me!”

Themes from the Psalm of Psalms

STANZA 1:

Aleph: Longing to be like the blessed ones who walk in God’s ways

When you and I want to emphasize something in our language, we have many ways to do it. If I’m speaking out loud, I might raise my voice to a shout, or lower it to a whisper so people will listen more carefully. I might…slow…my…speech down to make a point or I might use my hands like some cultures are famous for doing.

Or, what if I’m writing something? I can add emphasis by underlining a word or phrase. I might write it in large capital letters, or hit the italics button on my computer. In some instances, you can emphasize what you’re writing or saying by REPETITION. This is a method that the ancient Hebrews were very fond of. Often, they would repeat a term to call attention to its importance. In their poetry, Jewish people would use a device we call PARALLELISM. 

In Hebrew poems such as the Psalms, the writer would often write a line such as “Praise the God of our salvation.” Then in the very next line, write the same thought, but in different words, like: “Give honor to the God of Jacob!” Basically, the Psalmist would be saying the same thing, but giving it emphasis through a repetition of the idea. 

You and I sometimes use a similar technique in our language. “Queen Elizabeth is the queen of all queens!” we might say, or “That building is the skyscraper of skyscrapers!” or “Michael Jordan was the athlete’s athlete!” or “That was the war to end all wars!” We use repetition of an idea to make it stand out and draw more attention to it. What I want to emphasize in this message is part of the Book of Books – which is the Holy Bible. It is both A book of books, being made up of 66 separate books written by many human authors under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; and it’s THE Book of books, meaning it is the ULTIMATE source of divine revelation to man.

THE Book of books is the book beyond compare. It is the ONLY source we have of ABSOLUTE truth – truth about God, about ourselves, about our sin problem, about God’s law, and about our only Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The 66 books making up our Bible are divided into different GROUPINGS of books: Books of Law, books of History, books of Poetry and Wisdom, books of Prophecy, etc. And right in the middle of these 66 books, we find a book of Psalms. This is the SONGBOOK of the ancient Israelites, compiled into its present form by the kings and priests of the Old Testament. 

The book of Psalms is very important because it contains much doctrine about the nature of our God, and much instruction about how we ought to FEEL about Him, and how He is at work in our world and in our LIVES. The Psalms have a combination of BEAUTY and TRUTH that touches both our MINDS and our HEARTS. It also served as the worship manual for the Jewish temple, and for much of the Christian church since its beginning. The early church during Apostolic times made great use of the Psalms in worshiping the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, seeing many, many references in the Psalms that pointed to Jesus as the Messiah – many of which were QUOTED by the Savior Himself.

Well, within this Songbook of songbooks, in the middle of the Book of books, we find a chapter that could be called “The Psalm of Psalms.” It is the LONGEST of the Psalms, and more than that, it is the longest CHAPTER in the entire Book of books! This is Psalm 119. Although the author of this psalm is not specified in the scripture, much reliable Jewish tradition points to the near-certainty that it was composed by the “sweet psalmist of Israel” himself, King David. There are many phrases and terms throughout Psalm 119 that appear in other Davidic psalms, and nowhere else. So, it is fairly safe to look at this Psalm of Psalms as the product of David’s pen.

In the coming months, it is my desire to dig deeply into this longest of the Psalms and address the individual themes of its 22 stanzas. Each stanza of 8 verses uses a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet to begin every one of the 8 verses in that stanza. The first letter in their alphabet is the letter “ALEPH.”

Here is how that stanza reads in an English translation (NIV):

1.“Blessed are they whose ways are blameless, / who walk according to the law of the LORD.

2. Blessed are they who keep His statutes / and seek Him with all their heart.

3. They do nothing wrong; / they walk in His ways.

4. You have laid down precepts / that are to be fully obeyed.

5. Oh, that my ways were steadfast / in obeying Your decrees!

6. Then I would not be put to shame / when I consider all Your commands.

7. I will praise you with an upright heart / as I learn Your righteous laws.

8. I will obey your decrees; / do not utterly forsake me.”

The theme I come up with as I’ve been considering this opening stanza is:

“Longing to be like the blessed ones who walk in God’s ways”

As we consider David’s opening to Psalm 119, we notice that he does not start out by mentioning himself, as he does in many of his psalms. In fact, the opening verses remind one of the very first of the Psalms: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, or stands in the way of sinners, or sits in the seat of the scorners. But his delight is in the law of the Lord…”

Rather than starting out with himself, he writes about those he greatly admires. Those who know and live in the light of God’s law. Those folks, he says, are blameless, or “undefiled” in the way they live. They may not be sinlessly perfect, but they are living exemplary lives, because they are making an honest effort to walk – that is, to conduct themselves day by day, moment by moment – in the law, or, according to the commandments, of the Lord. The expressed will of Yahweh, the one true and living God.

There are very few public figures in our day that can be genuinely admired for their blameless lives and undefiled conduct. So often, even as we consider the preachers and churchmen who are famous figures in our society, we become disappointed and even embarrassed by their sinful conduct that comes to light. And the situation is even more serious when we think of the people in the pews! Poll after poll shows that the moral conduct of people claiming to be Christians in our land is very little different from the behavior of people who don’t claim to know Jesus at all.

The false statement has spread far and wide among believers that Christians today are not really bound by the requirements of God’s law: even by the Ten Commandments! It is said that, because Jesus died on the cross to pay for all our sins, and given us His perfect righteousness for our record in Heaven, He must no longer be interested in how we live our lives once we have trusted Him for our salvation. We have his forgiveness and promise of safety from hell-fire, so why worry about becoming more holy in our behavior? This is far from the view of both the Old and New Testaments!

On the contrary, Paul writes in Ephesians 2, “By grace you are saved, through faith, and this is not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus FOR GOOD WORKS, which God planned beforehand for us to DO.” Doing good deeds – obeying God’s law, in other words – is never the BASIS of our salvation (which is totally by grace and through faith), but obedience is the inevitable FRUIT of true saving faith. Holy behavior is the GOAL and the REASON God chooses to save us. He chose believers out of this sinful world to reflect His perfection and give Him glory (Eph. 1:12).

David, just like you and I, was saved by grace, through faith in the coming Messiah – Jesus Christ. But the new heart granted to him by Yahweh expresses a deep desire to become like the blessed ones he so deeply admires, for their faithful walk in the ways of the Lord. He makes sure to point out that the blessed ones are not obeying out of mere obligation or drudgery, like the older son in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Rather, the ones he admires are keeping God’s statutes while seeking God “with all their heart.”

As David watches these men and women who seek God wholeheartedly, he makes the observation that “They do nothing wrong; they walk in His ways.” Again, David is no fool, supposing these people are incapable of slipping into sins that they must then confess before their God. But he is suitably impressed by their walk, their conduct, that is unblemished in the eyes of people. Those who are “sold out” to obedience to the God who’s saved them, obey out of gratitude for that salvation, and do so easily, joyfully, habitually. Because they love their Savior, and every word – every command – out of His mouth. Such people have no need to hire a public relations firm to puff up their reputations. No, their upright conduct SPEAKS FOR ITSELF.

Next, King David changes his point of view in that he begins addressing God Himself. He has expressed admiration for the obedience of the blessed of God. Now he expresses admiration for the God who blesses their obedience. Notice in the remainder of this stanza how David uses such absolute terms as “FULLY obeyed” and “STEADFAST in obeying” and “ALL your commands” and at the end “UTTERLY forsake.” Surely the king is implying that this law-giving God is a God who means business! A God who is playing for keeps!

There are many passages in the Psalms where David expresses the feeling and the fear of being forsaken, both by people and by God Himself. To be forsaken by God, in the minds of the ancient Hebrew, is the OPPOSITE of being blessed. It is to have God turn His back on me and not to favor me with His attention and care. Forsakenness means to be under the curse of God. Here in verse 8 we see that David begs NOT to be under the curse of God. He knows that his own heart and mind are fallen, and bent toward disobedience. He knows the sin and unfaithfulness of which he is capable, but he also knows the way NOT to be under God’s curse. 

First, in verse 4, we must know that God’s precepts – His instructions – are to be fully obeyed. He doesn’t give us mere suggestions of how to find happiness and holiness. He makes it plain, absolute and non-negotiable. His yes means “yes” and His no means “no.”

In verse 5 the psalmist expresses his heart desire, which often follows the word “Oh!” His heart desire is to be one of those BLESSED ones that he admires so much! He longs to hear the Lord say on the day of judgment: “Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter into the joy of the Lord!” David continues in verse 6 the result of a steadfast obedience: “Then I would not be put to shame when I consider all your commands.” 

Much of the suffering the Lord Jesus went through on the cross for you and me was the SHAME of the cross. To hang there probably naked for all to see, on a criminal’s torture rack, when He really belonged on a royal throne. Christ bore that shame and that curse so that we would be free to live in joyful obedience to the Lawgiver who gave up His only Son for our redemption! This would be the outworking of God’s amazing grace and love, to give him everlasting GLORY!

The process of learning God’s “righteous laws” (verse 7) ought to be a matter of praise for the upright in heart. David commits himself to such praise, offering it as a motivation for His God to look on him with favor and blessing. This is a large part of what we will be doing as we continue discovering the awesome themes of this Psalm of Psalms. 

Lord, please make it our deep desire to look deeper into the righteous law of God. Enable us to seek your blessing by walking steadfast in the way YOU have prescribed. Let us never take your love and gracious salvation for granted, thinking that you don’t care about how we live.

May we long to be like the blessed ones who walk in Your ways!

Amen.

Going...to Reign!

The arrival of the Lord Jesus into the world was a miraculous event. Every year we celebrate and memorialize Christ’s birth to a peasant girl and her husband, Mary and Joseph. We thrill at the appearance of angel messengers who are sent by God the Father to herald the descent to earth of His only begotten Son. How angels visited the lowly shepherds in the fields near Bethlehem, telling them that “today, in the city of David, a Savior is born to you, who is Christ the Lord.”

Jesus Himself is truly a “Miracle Man.” For never before or since has the Creator of heaven and earth taken upon Himself a second nature – a human nature, in order to bodily invade our world so that He might “seek and save that which was lost.” Only a God-Man could bridge the gap between lost and sinful humanity, and the holy God who had created them to be His own holy image-bearers. Only the God-Man could live an earthly life totally free from sin, and only He could bear our sins to the cross: the judgment tree of both wicked man…and our holy God.

The night before our Lord Jesus was betrayed by one of His closest companions, He had a final meal with his Twelve Apostles, one of whom would betray Him. And He told these close, close friends that He was just about to leave them. He was about to go away, and where He was going, none of them could follow. They were all troubled by this, and they begged Him to tell them where He was going and why they couldn’t come. Jesus wasn’t just talking about his suffering that lay ahead, where He would be handed over to the Romans by His own people to be mistreated and mocked and beaten and pierced and crucified. No, Jesus told them that His Father was about to take His Son back out of this sinful world, raise Him up into Heaven, and glorify Him.

When our Savior was on the cross, dying in our place – in the place of all His people the Father chose for Him before the world began – after Jesus endured all the humiliation of the Jews and the Gentiles, and all the wrath against sin that the Father heaped upon Him, He cried out, “It is finished!” The saving work the Son of God was sent here to perform was finally over. Christ Jesus was victorious, because he had become obedient even unto the death of the cross. And from that day on, the Cross would have a new meaning it had never had before! For that is where the God-Man laid down His life for you and me.

Christ Jesus, the holy One, the sinless One, experienced death. This, in itself, was a kind of miracle. Never had a sinless person had to face death. Yes, a couple of men were taken to heaven bodily before they died: Enoch, at the beginning of Genesis, and Elijah, toward the end of the Old Testament history. But only Jesus of Nazareth, who had lived a completely sinless, obedient life before God, died the death of a sinless man. But His sinlessness was then confirmed on the Third Day, the first day of the week when the Spirit breathed new life into the dead body of Jesus, and He walked out of the tomb alive!

God the Father granted His only begotten Son new life, because Jesus had offered His own sinless life to suffer an atoning death. A sacrificial offering that would pay for all our sin, turning away the eternal wrath of a just and holy God, from those who deserved to die, but would believe in the Son of God, and would be joined to Him by God’s grace.

But Jesus’ resurrection from the grave was only part of the glory the Father had in store for Him. For forty days, Jesus appeared again and again to his followers, alive from death, to be touched by them, speak with them, eat with them, be seen by hundreds of them. And then, on that wonderful, miraculous day, on the Mount of Olives near the holy city, Jesus was taken up into heaven, in the presence of His disciples. It wasn’t simply a mode of transportation from one place to another. Rather, Jesus’ Ascension was a victory march up through the clouds into Heaven’s court, to be crowned and enthroned on high as King of Kings and Lord of Lords!

After He died, God the Father began exalting Him at once. The dead body of Christ wasn’t treated like a common criminal’s body, normally just cast into the burning garbage dump outside the city gates. No, his body was granted to one of Jesus’ wealthy followers, who placed that precious body in a new tomb – a garden tomb. Jesus’ body was “planted” there in that tomb, so that three days later, the emptiness of the tomb would proclaim that “it was impossible for death to hold Him.”

Normally, people cannot be born from virgin girls. Normally, people have only one fallen human nature. Normally, people cannot cast out demons or raise the dead. And, normally, people stay dead after they die. But Jesus was different. He was God’s beloved Son, given a human nature free from sin, living a sinless, obedient life, to the Father’s glory and honor. And when He died in the place of God’s enemies, so that they could become His children, God couldn’t contain His joy. He was compelled to honor the Son, by raising Him to the highest place, Paul wrote in Philippians 2. That at the name of Jesus, every knee would bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

On that fearful night before the cross, Jesus told those fearful disciples of His, “Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in Me. In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go, you know, and the way you know.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we know not where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I Am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No man comes to the Father, but by Me.”

Jesus assured all His friends and followers, including you and me, that it was to our great advantage that He was leaving them. Jesus’ work of obedience and sacrifice on this earth was about to come to an end. But His kingly reign in Heaven was about to begin. Today, our triumphant, eternal God-Man is on the throne of the entire universe, ruling over all things for the good of His people. Through His Holy Spirit and the preaching of the Gospel, Christ is now building His church, made up of people from every people, tongue and nation. And when that work is finished, and our mansions all made ready, He will “come again, and receive you unto Himself,” and we will be with our beloved Savior and King, forever and ever.

Amen.

Prevailing

Knocking, seeking, asking
for shelter, wisdom, strength;
care on Jesus casting,
we'll never know the length,
breadth or depth or distance
His love for us will go ---
ours is but a pittance
compared to Christ's, we know.

Boldly, daily trusting
the grace found at His throne,
humbly, trembling, resting,
we claim it for our own.
Weak and sinful, failing,
we scramble up the Rock,
there, by prayer prevailing,
we ask, we seek, we knock.

MNA

1/16/05

God's Valentine

 (Read First Corinthians 13)

When Jesus was asked to name the greatest commandment of God’s law, He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength… and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Love, as the songwriter says, “is a many-splendored thing.” A Roman bishop named Valentinus was proclaimed as a saint by the early Catholic church, and he became the patron saint of lovers, as we know from celebrating Valentine’s day each year in February. The greeting card makers and the candy companies do a very lucrative business filling the yearly needs of lovers and would-be lovers who wish to express their tender feelings at this time of year.

But we find in the Bible a definition of love that takes us beyond the realm of feelings of physical attraction and romantic chemistry. There is a love described there that is modeled after the holy character of God Himself. It is a supernatural love, a love for the unlovely and the undeserving. A deep desire to offer one’s self and substance for the betterment of another.

The Apostle Paul wrote several lengthy letters to a very troubled church in first century Corinth. This congregation was experiencing problems galore! The people were divided into camps based on the personalities of their favorite preachers. They were acting proud and boastful about their spiritual gifts–God-given abilities that equipped them to serve one another! They were causing strife and discord over how to do corporate worship and celebrate the Lord’s Supper. There was even a sexual scandal going on that Paul needed to correct! 

He spends several chapters of his epistle speaking to the needs of this troubled church and instructing them on how their worship and ministries should function. He compares the church of Christ to a living body with many different parts that work together, suffer together, rejoice together. Every member should be doing its part joyfully and helpfully. 

But you know what? A church is made up of people. Yes, they are Christians, but they are still fallible. They are saved sinners, but they are still SINNERS. No one can ever be perfect before he or she passes through those pearly gates of our heavenly home! We all have rough edges, annoying little habits, manners of speech and action that are hard to live with. Part of the trouble in Corinth was that the believers were seeking the showier, greater gifts of the Spirit. They wanted to be up front, noticed, appreciated.

Well, Paul began to write in Chapter Thirteen of his letter, what he described as “a more excellent way.” And here is where he began to describe the supreme gift of the Spirit that is to permeate and characterize all the other gifts: DIVINE LOVE. This is God’s own Valentine to His church, and the gift that won’t give you cavities like candy! Or sound corny like a greeting card. Divine love gets us out of ourselves and shines the light on people around us. For that is the pattern our hearts become aware of as we learn about our loving Father, His Son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit who lives within us.

As we make our way through this magnificent description of love, we find that it not only reflects the loving character of our God, but it tells us how love relates to the commandments that God gave us to protect and cherish the very values that make life worth living.

Paul begins by describing a brilliant speaker: “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels…” Without the power of love, all the words of human orators, or even angelic messengers, become nothing but noise…empty…meaningless. “A sounding gong or a clanging cymbal” may sound impressive or gain your attention. But they contain no meaning in themselves. 

The first speaker, of course, was God Himself. He spoke into the empty void and said, “Let there be light!” He used His voice to call creation into existence. Have you ever wondered why? Why did God create a universe in the first place? He had no needs that were not fulfilled. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit had made up the Trinity for all eternity past—a Trinity filled with love and blissful fellowship. They had decided to create the heavens and the earth out of the sheer overflow of their DIVINE LOVE! God’s very words are words motivated by His love.

Do we speak with love? Do we choose loving words to express our thoughts and ideas and plans? When we speak, we are launching our hearts and minds out into the world for others to hear.  Jesus taught “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” What worlds are we creating for others to hear when we talk? Are they worlds of praise and wonder, or worlds of complaint and misery? Or simply empty noise?

Paul goes on to write about knowledge. The early church was built on the knowledge of Jesus Christ and what He came to earth to accomplish for us: our salvation. It was also built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets who received messages direct from God! Many in the church of Corinth wanted those kinds of grand revelations. They wanted impressive knowledge that would make them stand out from the crowd.

But elsewhere, Paul warns that knowledge can puff us up with pride. It is love that edifies, that builds up other people, perhaps by sharing one’s knowledge in a gentle, loving way. We might have heads that are filled with great facts and doctrine about God and His Word. But the reason God reveals truth to our ears and our minds and hearts is so that we will believe and treasure His truth, and teach it lovingly to others so that THEY might benefit. Not so that WE might be applauded by men.

And what about FAITH? Having a strong faith is surely a high priority to the Lord, right? Paul next makes the point that even a strong faith in the power of God comes to NOTHING if it isn’t reflecting God’s LOVE along with it. The Apostle Peter boasted about his great faith in the Savior. He claimed he’d follow Jesus faithfully even if all the other disciples turned aside. But Peter’s faith failed him the night Christ was betrayed and arrested. When people identified him as one of Jesus’ disciples, Peter became frightened and denied that he’d ever MET the Man!

After Christ rose from the dead, He restored Peter to his prominence as a leader, an apostle. And what did He ask this man whose faith had failed him? “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?” Jesus asked this three times, one time for each of Peter’s three denials. When Simon Peter assured his Master that, yes, of course he loved Him, Jesus told him, “Then, you must feed My sheep—look after the needs of others.” This is how divine love is worked out and demonstrated.

Many Christians are willing to sacrifice everything for God’s kingdom—just as long as they are given the proper amount of credit in return! Self-sacrifice can be motivated by the selfish desire for personal recognition. The self-righteous Pharisees proved this. Their outward acts of holiness were well-known, even legendary. But inside their hearts, Jesus told them, there was no true love motivating their sacrifices. They only did them “to be seen by men.”

Paul gives a list of qualities that describe true love’s character. We can compare these qualities to the Ten Commandments and see how they connect with each other. “Love suffers long and is kind.” Patient, kind-hearted people tend to honor the Lord, as well as other people, rather than being eager to receive honor in return. Honoring our parents is one of the commandments, and as our parents age, honoring them takes more and more kindness and patience!

“Love does not envy, doesn’t parade itself, isn’t puffed up.” Envying what others have in the way of possessions, abilities, lifestyles and so on, leads us to the sin of coveting, which violates the tenth commandment. The Corinthians were seeking to out-shine one another with the showiness of their spiritual gifts. Paul is making the point here that this kind of competition is hardly focusing on meeting the needs of others. Rather it is an exercise in feeding our own ego.

“Love doesn’t behave rudely, doesn’t seek its own, is not provoked.” Behaviors like rudeness, greed and anger can quickly ignite into acts of theft and even murder. God’s commands against these things are His way of protecting the values of life and property that we mostly take for granted. Having a heart of love for God and for others means that we are devoted to protecting those values and promoting both the quality and quantity of what others possess. Doing others the good that we want them to do to us!

“Love thinks no evil, doesn’t rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.” What kind of thoughts make our hearts rejoice, make them sing for joy and overflow with gladness? There are some folks, perhaps you and I sometimes, who get a secret thrill out of wickedness. Whether we read about personal scandals of the rich and famous, or see sinful behavior acted out in a play or a movie, there is something attractive to our darker side. We take a kind of delight in evil. We look at the sins of other people and enjoy the fact that they are worse than ourselves. 

Savoring the taste of evil in our minds can be the poison that pushes love out of our hearts. It can turn normal romantic attraction into lust that can lead to impure thoughts and adultery. Satan has a way of twisting good truth into half-truths, and then even more into outright lies. He might tell us, “God is so gracious and forgiving; He won’t mind so much if you flirt with this or that little sin. You can always confess it later and all will be well.” Of course, he will never admit the pain and remorse and loss of joy that comes with that sin. That hook is always well hidden in the tempting bait he holds out to trap us.

Delighting in the truth. Do we know the truth of God? God’s truth is the real thing. Truth is the reality as God has created it, as well as the way He sees it. The world is full of lies and half-truths that camouflage the truth of God. It is in the Holy Scriptures that we find truth in all its delightful fullness. Truth about God’s good creation and man’s tragic fall into sin. Truth of God’s promises to send a Redeemer, and Jesus of Nazareth, who fulfilled those promises. Truth about what love really looks like—from God’s perspective.

Love delights in the truth. It lives in the truth. It TELLS the truth. It shares the truth with others because we’re so delighted with it. We can’t keep it to ourselves. Paul finishes his list of qualities by using the word ALL four times. Love bears ALL, believes ALL, hopes ALL, endures ALL. In other words, when we encounter another person, love is prepared to accept them at face value and assume the BEST about them. And if that person fails us, love is willing to put up with their faults. Love is a faithful friend who is not easily put off by shortcomings. Rather, love keeps on believing the best and coming back for more. Love is TOUGH and very hard to overcome.

And isn’t that the way God’s love is toward you and me? Look at the patient way He dealt with His people Israel, giving them His laws, making them a privileged nation, pursuing them and disciplining them when they disobeyed Him. Promising a Savior again and again, and finally coming through on that promise by sending His only Son. And what amazing love it was that He included the Gentiles in His plan of Redemption! 

Paul’s paean of praise for the gift of divine love is a tall order for those of us who know Jesus as our Lord and Savior. His love is a supernatural love that is only possible in hearts where God’s Holy Spirit is truly at home. From all eternity past, Father, Son and Holy Ghost have loved one another. And that love ended up creating US. Let us imitate that love by showing it to one another, and by sending its bright beams outward into a sinful, sad, needy world.

MNA

2/13/2022

Two Heroic Women

There is a fine old saying that tells us: “Behind every great man is a great woman.” And many of our Biblical heroes such as Samson, Samuel, David, and even Jesus Himself, were given birth and supported and raised by admirable women.

Proverbs 31 asks the question: “A virtuous woman who can find? Her value is far above rubies.” If I, as a man, want to gain something of surpassing value in my life, getting myself a godly wife is a far better investment than the costliest jewels in the world.

When the Lord God had completed His work of creating the heavens and the earth, He looked upon the good world He’d made–--specifically at the first man, Adam. And the Lord said, “It is NOT GOOD that the man should be alone; I will make a helper suitable for him.” And then, after putting the man into a deep sleep, God took a rib from Adam’s side and fashioned it into a woman. Eve was created from Adam, to become Adam’s HELPER.

The Hebrew word used here is the word EZER. This word goes beyond being a servant or an assistant who is somehow inferior to the one being helped. In fact, God uses this term EZER most often to refer to HIMSELF, the helper and rescuer of His people. The One who hears their cries and comes to their aid when they face a strong enemy! It is a word that means “hero.”

When I think of modern-day heroes, the first one who comes to my mind is Superman. In the typical Superman story, someone gets into big trouble--–either a mugger or a gunman or a natural disaster of some kind–--and begins crying out for help. Next, we find Clark Kent, a plain, ordinary, mild-mannered news reporter who is never suspected of being, in reality, the heroic Superman! Clark picks up the cry for help with his super-hearing, jumps into the nearest closet or phone booth, and changes into the Man of Steel, who takes flight and saves the day.

We see again and again in Scripture, that God chooses unlikely people to do remarkable things in order to carry out His sovereign plans. And this is certainly true of Shiphrah and Puah, two Hebrew midwives who performed a great rescue out of reverence for the Lord. They pulled this off by disobeying a powerful king, then covering up their disobedience by telling a lie.

In the book of Exodus, we find the children of Israel--–the twelve tribes of the family of Jacob--–in bondage down in Egypt. Having moved to the region of Goshen during the time of Joseph, the Israelites had become too numerous in the eyes of the Egyptian king, the Pharaoh. So the king forced them into slavery, in order to build his store cities, and to keep them from being a military threat during times of war.

But our sovereign God had other plans for His people. His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had been to make them a great nation, give them the land of Canaan, and eventually to save the whole world through this holy people. And, Pharaoh or no Pharaoh, our God ALWAYS keeps His promises!

You see, behind the scenes of the Egyptian plots and the Hebrews’ plight, and behind all the political upheavals happening in our own day, there is a greater war going on. Ever since Adam and Eve chose to eat the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, God had been promising that a Redeemer would free mankind from slavery to sin and to Satan. The Seed of the Woman, Adam’s helper, would be this ultimate EZER, or rescuer: The God-Man, Christ Jesus.

Throughout the pages of Scripture, we see Satan seek to prevent this rescuer, this great hero, from fulfilling God’s promise of redemption. Even though the king of Egypt had his own personal reasons for what he did, the real contest was between the plans of Satan and the plans of God going forward. God had foretold that His people would be enslaved in a land not their own (Gen. 15:13). But then, He promised that those enslaving them would be judged and that Israel would leave that land with great possessions. And, as Job confessed to the Lord, “I know that You can do all things, and that no plan of Yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2).

Can you imagine how humbling it must have been for this great Egyptian king to realize, first of all, that his plan of enslaving the Israelite people wasn’t making them less numerous, but even MORE numerous? And, second, to seek to further his plans, he had to meet with these two lowly Hebrew midwives? The Pharaoh was supposed to be divine. A god among the other Egyptian deities. But here was this great ruler, reduced to giving orders to Shiphrah and Puah, whose names mean “fair one” and “little lass.” He thought these simple servant-level females would just loyally follow his commands and kill the boy babies as they were being born.

We see here a clear picture of how low and how base our sinful natures can make us. The birth of a child is always a cause for joy and celebration as a new life is coming into the world. But the desire of Satan and all his followers is the prevention of new life. The destruction of life. The bringing of misery and tears and mourning, to reach their goals. The Hebrews had become too numerous and too strong, too worrisome to the Egyptian people. Killing the male children was the Pharaoh’s sinful solution. So, would these two simple midwives obey this earthly master?

How eager are you and I to please our earthly masters, friends, family? To earn their pleasure and their praise, are we willing to disregard our duties to the Lord and disobey His laws? These two women disobeyed the instructions of the Pharaoh by allowing the Hebrew boys to live. They may have done this for many reasons. Maybe because they hated the king and his evil policies. Or maybe they were proud of their profession, and didn’t want to have a bad reputation as midwives. Or maybe they just couldn’t take such precious little lives so callously at birth…

But, in fact, the Bible tells us plainly why Shiphrah and Puah disobeyed the king’s command: It was because they “feared the Lord.” Throughout the word of God, the claim is made again and again: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” The two Hebrew midwives had a settled conviction in their hearts and minds, that to displease GOD would be a much more serious matter than displeasing their earthly ruler. Is this the way our minds work, yours and mine?

Jesus instructed His followers not to fear men, who can only kill the body; but to fear God, who can kill both body and soul in hell. If there is a real God, who is both our Creator and our Judge, and a real hell, where bodies and souls will face eternal destruction, then NOT to fear this God is the supreme foolishness. Many, if not most, of the people around us are living their lives AS IF there were no God to Judge them, and no hell to face after we die. “The fool has said in his heart, ‘there is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1) They fear the Pharaohs of this world rather than the Lord.

Shiphrah and Puah are heroic examples of godly women who rescued baby boys who the king had condemned to death. And their motivation was a healthy, sensible, godly fear of the Lord God. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The God who had promised deliverance to the enslaved children of Israel. They were willing to face an earthly king’s wrath rather than to displease the God of their fathers.

As we read further in our text, we see that these ladies were wise in another way. It happened eventually that the Pharaoh became aware that the male babies were not being killed as he had commanded. Shiphrah and Puah once again found themselves in the king’s presence, having to give an account of why this was happening. The two midwives had obviously discussed what answer they would give the Pharaoh: that the Hebrew women were more vigorous in their labor and gave birth before the midwives could get to them. And this was obviously UNTRUE.

Were the two women simply lying to avoid the wrath of the king? What would have happened if they had told the truth? The king may have had them killed, and then chosen OTHER midwives to carry out his plans. The new midwives may have obeyed him, causing the death of the baby boys yet to be born. The lie that Shiphrah and Puah told was designed to get the Pharaoh to give up his evil plan. In effect, they were saying, “It isn’t our fault the babies aren’t being killed. It is the natural vigor of the Hebrew women. Something beyond our control. Your plan won’t work!”

All things being equal, it is NEVER a good thing to tell a lie. But we live in a sinful, fallen world. A world in which lies lead to even BIGGER SINS. Once a situation becomes a matter of life or death, being totally truthful can become a risky business. If an evil ruler is seeking to kill an innocent person and you are hiding that person, then it might be your duty to hide the truth from that ruler. A person bent on murder cannot expect the truth from a victim’s protectors.

Shiphrah and Puah did their best to rescue the Hebrew boys under threat of death, putting their own lives at risk. And then they gave Pharaoh an answer designed to forestall his wicked plans. And because they did these things, a Levite woman named Jochebed would soon give birth to a Hebrew baby who’d grow up to be Israel’s great deliverer and lawgiver: Moses!

Apart from the grace of God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, people are alienated from the source of true wisdom, and will naturally live as if there were no God. They will follow the crowd down the broad road which Jesus said would lead them to damnation in the end. Satan will use any means to hinder the outworking of God’s plans. The Lord purposed to bring life and light into the world by sending His only Son to be our Savior. This was to be the fulfillment of His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. To use their descendants to bring Christ to mankind. The devil uses the Pharaohs of this world to oppose God and keep us in death and darkness.

We are born as sinners alienated from God--–natural enemies of the One who created us. It’s only by God’s grace that our hearts are changed so that we love and trust and fear the Lord. Because the midwives feared God and chose to please Him rather than man, the Lord rewarded them by giving them a family line of their own. You and I are promised a great reward as we follow our Savior faithfully and trust His word, especially in the face of opposition and rejection by evil people. Doing the right thing even when it’s hard, shows people that our God can be trusted.

So, who do we trust? Who do we fear, love and respect? Who is it we desire most to please? God’s word tells us the kind of world God is planning for us, the new heaven and new earth He has promised for those who love Him. A perfect world of holiness, love, light and life. A world where all sin, death and darkness have been banished. 

When we are born again, born of the Spirit, born from above, we take our first steps toward that heavenly kingdom. The Lord Jesus made that new birth a reality by living a perfect life, laying down His life for us on the cross, and being raised to new life to rule in Heaven for all who trust in Him.

Looking to Jesus Christ, trusting in Him, that is how one is taken from death to life. And it’s how a Christian lives his new life from day to day. Jesus became the perfect Son of Abraham who made it possible for you and me to be a part of that eternal family. A family that extends all the way back to Exodus, and to a pair of heroic midwives who feared God and dared to rescue God’s children. Praise the Lord for raising up such faithful followers.

Amen.