Show Notes
2 Samuel 6
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Thank you for the work that you have done in saving us. We ask that you would bless us and encourage us in the life that we have in Christ.
[00:00:10] Humble our hearts that we might no longer cling to our self righteousness, our experiences, our wisdom, our wealth, our connections, our ideas, our hopes for the in our plans for ourselves. Lord, help us to have a vision for you and you only, and to see all things through you, our true light.
[00:00:37] We ask, Lord, that you would help us to see these things more clearly and that you would continue to put to death that which is earthly in us as we hear your word this morning.
[00:00:49] I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart would be acceptable in your sight.
[00:00:55] We pray that you would be our rock and our redeemer and that we would come to a better, a clearer, truer understanding of who you are and who you are for us, that we might dwell with you now and forever through Jesus Christ, our only Savior. It's in his name that we pray. Amen.
[00:01:19] Let's remain standing and hear God's word from second Samuel, Chapter six.
[00:01:55] Let's hear God's word this morning and think about the presence of God and how it is we treat the presence of God. And of course, and another way to say God himself in our lives.
[00:02:09] All right, 2 Samuel chapter 6.
[00:02:12] David again gathered all the chosen men of Israel, 30,000 and David arose and went with all the people who were with him in BAAL Judah, to bring up from there the Ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts, who sits enthroned on the cherubim. And they carried the Ark of God on a new cart and brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was on a hill. On the hill.
[00:02:39] And Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were driving the new cartoon with the Ark of God. Nahio went before the ark, and David and all the house of Israel were celebrating before the Lord with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. And when they came to the threshing floor of Nakan, Uzzah put out his hand to the Ark of God and took hold of it. For the oxen stumbled and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah. And God struck him down there because of his error, and he died there beside the Ark of God.
[00:03:16] And David was angry because the Lord had broken out against Uzzah. And that place is called Perez Uzzah to this day.
[00:03:26] And David was afraid of the Lord that day. And he said, how can the Ark of God, or how can the Ark of the Lord come to me?
[00:03:34] So David was not willing to take the Ark of the Lord into the city of David. But David took it aside to the house of Obed Edom the Gittite.
[00:03:42] And the Ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed Edom the Giddite three months. And the Lord blessed Obed Edom and all his household.
[00:03:52] And it was told, king David, the Lord has blessed the household of Obed Edom and all that belongs to him because of the Ark of God.
[00:04:01] So David went and brought up the Ark of God from the house of Obed Edom to the city of David with rejoicing.
[00:04:08] And when those who bore the Ark of the Lord had gone six steps, he sacrificed an ox and a fatted animal. And David danced before the Lord with all his might. And David was wearing a linen ephod.
[00:04:23] So David and all the house of Israel brought up the Ark of the Lord with shouting and with the sound of the horn.
[00:04:32] As the Ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal, the daughter of Saul, looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord.
[00:04:42] And she despised him in her heart.
[00:04:45] And they brought in the Ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it. And David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord. And when David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord, of the hosts and and distributed among all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins to each one.
[00:05:11] Then all the people departed, each to his house.
[00:05:15] And David returned to bless the household or bless his household. But Michal, the daughter of Saul, came out to meet David and said, how the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants, female servants, and as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself.
[00:05:38] And David said to Michal, it was before the Lord who chose me above your father and above all his house, to appoint me as prince over Israel.
[00:05:48] The people of the Lord and I will celebrate before the Lord. I will make myself yet more contemptible than this. And I will be abased in your eyes, but by the female servants of whom you have spoken. By them I shall be held in honor. And Michal, the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death, since the reading of God's word. Please be seated.
[00:06:35] So two Samuel chapter six starts. And it sounds like it's going to be a battle, and it kind of is, although not the battle that we think it's going to be or we're used to hearing when we hear something like this.
[00:06:48] David again gathered all the chosen men of Israel, 30,000.
[00:06:53] This is the kind of thing you hear, we've heard right before big battles, right in response to some military action. But this time they're not going to battle against the Philistines or anyone else.
[00:07:06] David has a purpose on his mind, and a good one, too.
[00:07:11] He wants to bring the Ark of God, the Ark of the Lord, which has been on the peripheral periphery of Israel.
[00:07:19] And he wants to bring it in to the capital city, to the place where God has placed his name. It is right for the ark to be there, and it is good. God eventually will honor this greatly. He will allow Solomon to build a temple there in which the ark will be housed.
[00:07:37] But there are some important things that must be understood about this ark, things that were misunderstood at the beginning of 1st Samuel and will continue to be a problem throughout of the history of God's people.
[00:07:51] And it's not just the ark itself, but misunderstandings and problems around the presence of God or who God is, who we are in relation to him, how it is we think about him, how it is, we draw close to him, how it is we treat him.
[00:08:10] These things really matter, as we'll see in a little bit. McCall, she doesn't think they matter. She cares more about the glory of man and the glory of of the world.
[00:08:22] But there's other things going on which I want to think about with you today as we think about how we treat the presence of God. As David brings the ark of God to Jerusalem, it happens in 2 Samuel 6, in sort of 3 scenes.
[00:08:38] The first one is the first attempt of bringing the Ark to Jerusalem.
[00:08:47] It doesn't go smoothly.
[00:08:49] It all sounds really good at first, although there are some hints at the beginning that it's not going to go well.
[00:08:56] It sounds like it's going to go well. David gathers the people together, they go and get the ark. But then Uzzah dies. David gets scared, plants the ark in a certain place for a while, for three months, until he realizes that the whole household there is being blocked, blessed, and then brings it finally back home. And over the course of these events, we see various ways in which people are treating the presence of God.
[00:09:23] First, we see David treating it lightly.
[00:09:27] Then we see David struck and bound in fear.
[00:09:31] And then finally we see him having reverence and joy, which is good, but also experiencing pushback and trouble in his own household as a result of it.
[00:09:44] As we survey, and we're going to survey these ways in just a moment, as we survey these different ways, of the ways in which we treat God, treat the presence of God, and desire to come into communion with him. We can think about our own hearts as we see these things in this chapter. We can think about how we come to worship, how we treat the Lord. Do we treat him lightly or with reverence?
[00:10:11] Are we afraid of Him? And if so, why and how? These are things we want to think about this morning.
[00:10:20] Well, the first thing that we come to as we think about these reactions that happen in 2 Samuel 6 is the death of Uzzah.
[00:10:32] The death of Uzzah.
[00:10:34] What's going on here?
[00:10:36] Well, as you see, first of all, the good intention that I mentioned, David desires to gather all the people together and to bring the Ark in.
[00:10:44] He calls them together. But there is a problem right away.
[00:10:49] It's the problem. You find it in verse three. It says on the Ark. They carried the Ark of God on a new cart.
[00:10:59] That doesn't seem like a big deal, except that it is going against God's commands.
[00:11:05] He's commanded something else. And that helps us to understand what happens here later.
[00:11:11] The way it was supposed to work, the way the Ark was literally designed, right? It was manufactured under the authority and command of God to certain specifications.
[00:11:22] And those specifications included rings which were on the side of the ark, and long poles which would be put through those rings. And then it would be the priest's job to carry the Ark.
[00:11:36] God commanded that the holy things of God would be treated in a particular way, not because the Ark itself is God in various ways. That's made clear. The Ark is not a charm or a toy or a pet or anything like that. But the Ark does represent who God is. God has put his purpose purposes there. And so those who disregard those purposes, disregard his commands, are disregarding God.
[00:12:08] And this is the right of a king. This is one of the things that God emphasizes in this chapter. It's not David who's the king. In fact, he's called Prince over his people.
[00:12:20] David says that of himself when he's talking to Michal at the end of the chapter, right? Who is the ultimate king in Israel.
[00:12:29] It's God. And God is the one who commands how he ought to be treated, how he is to Be worshipped, how his holy things are to be dealt with.
[00:12:41] And they are disregarding that.
[00:12:44] This is. There's something of a common sense foolishness thing that happens here.
[00:12:49] Let's say you have a boss at work that you really respect, right? You think well of him or her.
[00:12:57] You admire. I'll just say him to keep it simple. You admire him, you look up to him, you think that he's a man of character, he does his work well, he takes care of his employees, these sorts of things. And he says, I don't want any phone calls after 8:00pm you don't call after 8:00pm right, you honor that. Or if he says, my office hours are from this time to this time, I want you to come in. And we, when you come in, make sure that, you know, whatever we can make something up on the spot. You put your coat over here and sit in this chair. What if instead you decided, well, I think I'm going to sit in his chair this time, and you swing around to the other side of the desk, or maybe you're in the Oval Office or some king's palace and you say, I think I'll sit here, right? We know there's a common sense in us, something that's built in guess by who, built into us by God, that we are to respect those who are in authority over us. And no one is in greater authority over us than God himself.
[00:14:03] For some reason, people think that when it comes to spirituality and religion and the things of God, that we can just worship God however we want, in whatever way we want, whatever way we choose, as long as it feels right to us, as long as it feels good to us. We forget he's the king, he's the boss. He's in charge. He's the creator. And he's not just some human king who's come up with some way that he thinks is best. And so we follow it out of respect to him.
[00:14:33] Everything that the Lord decides, down to the rings on the ark and the poles and how it's carried, are decided in perfect righteousness, with perfect plans and perfect desires, not just for his own worship, but. But as it affects us, as it influences us and works out in history and all kinds of things. God decides these things and he decides them. Well, it's really, really wrong for us to treat that lightly and to say, well, I think I just want to do it this way. And a car is more convenient. We can move faster. We'll get the ark to Jerusalem sooner. I don't know what David's reasons Were. But whatever they were, they weren't good ones.
[00:15:22] Or we could say they weren't good enough to say, well, I don't need to do what God told me because of fill in the blank.
[00:15:34] God said that the priests were supposed to carry the ark. And so David put his priests in a bad position, in a vulnerable position. This is not how a king should be acting. Now, of course, there's great things David is doing here. The thing that he wants, bringing the ark to Jerusalem is good. The praising, the worship, the instruments, all this good, good, good. But this detail is not good. And it's not minor either.
[00:16:06] So what happens?
[00:16:08] They're going before the Lord, the oxen stumble, and Uzzah puts out his hand to catch the ark.
[00:16:18] I don't know what would have happened if Uzzah hadn't reached out to touch the ark.
[00:16:24] But he wasn't supposed to.
[00:16:27] It wasn't supposed to be there in the first place. Which is a good reminder. Brothers and sisters, a lot of our problems that we get ourselves into are as a result of a previous step.
[00:16:38] We put ourselves in these bad positions, and then all of a sudden it feels like there's no good option.
[00:16:45] A lot of times, the reason when we feel like there's a double bind, I do A, and it's bad. I do B, and it's bad. It's because there was a previous step right before that where we put ourselves in this place where it feels like there's no good options.
[00:17:01] It doesn't mean we're trapped forever. There's forgiveness. God grants us knowledge of his grace, and He. He provides for us outs and means of redemption, as we will see.
[00:17:14] But they're important. It's important for us to notice these things and remind ourselves of them.
[00:17:20] Well, God makes it very clearly that Israel, Uzzah in particular, David as well, has contradicted his commands. Right there on that spot next to the ark, Uzzah dies. And this is not the first time that God has killed someone.
[00:17:36] Not murder, but a righteous execution of someone for contravening his commands. Particularly around worship.
[00:17:47] There are priests in numbers that are.
[00:17:51] That offer unauthorized, is the way the scripture puts it, unauthorized fire to the Lord, Nadab and Abihu, Abihu, they offer not.
[00:18:04] Well, they offer unauthorized fire. They worship God in a way that he has not commanded, and he puts them to death.
[00:18:13] In the New Testament, we have Ananias and Sapphira going before the apostles, lying about the amount of money that they have and are giving over to the Lord and to his to his people and to his causes for the church. And they try to pull this fast one on him and all this sort of stuff. And the Scriptures say, Peter says to them, you've lied to the Holy Spirit.
[00:18:37] And both of them are struck dead.
[00:18:43] If there's any part of you right now that wants to think this is unfair, remember who you're judging.
[00:18:52] And if there's any part of you that wants to think this is a light matter about the way in which we worship God, remember who you are treating lightly.
[00:19:04] And remember these examples.
[00:19:07] The Lord.
[00:19:08] The presence of the Lord is no small thing.
[00:19:14] It's not just a help.
[00:19:16] God's presence in our lives.
[00:19:19] God's presence among his people is not just this bonus side project extra hustle thing that we do.
[00:19:30] It's central to everything, our individual lives, the existence of the world, the shape of history, everything.
[00:19:42] We cannot, we must not treat it lightly, as David and Uzzah do here.
[00:19:51] Well, David does judge the Lord, and he gets angry in verse eight. And David was angry because the Lord had broken out against Uzzah.
[00:20:04] But that quickly turns and David becomes afraid of the Lord that day.
[00:20:11] And then he makes a second mistake that we are. Or I don't know what number we're on. Doesn't matter. Another mistake that we are often prone to make, right?
[00:20:21] What does he do in this sort of middle part of the chapter?
[00:20:26] He pauses it.
[00:20:28] So he says to the. About the ark. All right, this thing is frightening. The presence of the Lord is frightening. So. And I'm afraid because I've sinned, because God is powerful, because he's a consuming fire. And so he sends the house.
[00:20:46] Sorry, he sends the ark to the house of Obed Edom. The Giddite. Three months is there.
[00:20:52] Can you imagine?
[00:20:54] Imagine some giant state parade, right?
[00:20:58] Everybody comes out, the bands are playing. There's parades, there's people. Everything is going on. The Lord strikes someone dead.
[00:21:09] Everybody goes home, project incomplete and afraid.
[00:21:15] And so the ark goes to the house of Obed Edom. Here's the problem with that.
[00:21:20] Not for Obed Edom, it goes well for him and his household.
[00:21:26] But for David, he is now separated from all the blessings that are accruing to Obed Edom, right? The presence of the Lord, yes, is a.
[00:21:40] He is a consuming fire.
[00:21:43] And when we transgress the boundaries of his holiness and we treat him lightly and we despise him and all these things that we do, he promises us wrath.
[00:21:55] But the same Lord that promises wrath for those that are in fellowship and communion, with him, it's blessing upon blessing upon blessing. That's what Obed Edom experiences.
[00:22:08] This pause that David makes reminds me of a lot of people that I've known who feel spiritually adrift in their lives.
[00:22:18] They know something, that there is God and that he matters.
[00:22:22] There's a sense of the divine in their lives and that they owe something to him.
[00:22:29] But they don't really know how to worship him or really who he is, perhaps.
[00:22:37] And so maybe you buy a crystal here and you look at a horoscope there, and maybe you go on a spiritual journey to this place, or you read some ancient biblical or the Bible itself or some other book, religious book, and kind of gather these things together.
[00:22:58] On the one hand, sort of pursuing it in a way, but on the other hand, being afraid, afraid to know God, afraid to come close to him. Because what if I get it wrong?
[00:23:12] What if I don't really worship him rightly? What if all the concerns that we had from the previous section now leads us into a way that says, well, maybe I better just not do anything.
[00:23:22] Maybe I better not go to church until I get my life together.
[00:23:26] Maybe I better not approach him and do the things I'm called to do until I really figure everything out.
[00:23:33] Maybe I better just stay away from God.
[00:23:38] But that's not the answer either.
[00:23:41] Because to be away from the Lord is to be away from his blessing.
[00:23:46] It's to be away from the things that he has promised.
[00:23:49] And ultimately to be separated from him is to be under his wrath and under his curse.
[00:23:58] And so while we can understand and sympathize with David's fear in some way, here at the same time, David comes to change his mind about this.
[00:24:07] When does that happen?
[00:24:09] Well, when he's brought the news that the Lord has blessed the household of Obed Edom and all that belongs to him because of the Ark. And he remembers, yes, I do want the Ark in Jerusalem.
[00:24:24] This is where it belongs. This is where God has placed his name. And this is the place, the center from which he will bless all Israel and ultimately the world.
[00:24:36] So David, instead of treating God lightly or avoiding him, now does the right thing.
[00:24:46] He enters into the presence of the Lord as the way the Lord has commanded.
[00:24:52] He enters into the presence of the Lord, and he goes and he starts.
[00:24:56] And it says in verse 12, David went and brought up the Ark of God from the house of Obed Edom to the city of David. And he did it with rejoicing, rejoicing and sacrifices, a lot of sacrifices.
[00:25:13] It said. When those who bore the ark of the Lord, there's our repair, right? Repentance isn't just saying, I'm sorry, it's changing directions and doing the thing that we're called to do. He does that now. He does what he's supposed to do. Those who bear the ark, every time they go six steps, he sacrifices an ox and a fatted animal, and David is all in.
[00:25:37] He's not just going through the motions. He's not just doing a performative kind of thing. He's not doing it for show, as a way to win the approval of the people or something like that. Over and over, it emphasizes that what David does here, he does before the Lord.
[00:25:55] He does it before the Lord. And that's not just David's words, you know, so David representing his own actions. And he does do that. He says that that's his own testimony, but it's also the narrator's testimony. It's also the Holy Spirit's testimony here that that's what David is doing. And so that helps us to know how to read this here. What David is doing here is honorable and right and good. He is dancing before the Lord with all his might.
[00:26:26] There's also something else he's doing. He's taken off his royal robes and he's wearing a linen ephod.
[00:26:33] Now, sometimes people will think of this as him wearing nothing at all or nothing but this linen ephod. But that's not the case. The linen ephod was an outer garment that went on over often over the priestly clothes. And they would wear that. And that's what he's wearing here.
[00:26:53] The concern is not just the ephod, but, as McCall sees it, what he is not wearing, which is his royal clothes. It's not that he's wearing no clothes. It is that he is dressed as one of the vulgar or common people.
[00:27:10] He is the leader of a great state parade, one of the greatest in the history of Israel. He is the leader of the worship of God's people, along with the priests. He, in her mind, should be on display.
[00:27:27] Glorious, powerful, leading a great king.
[00:27:33] And now he's dancing, and now he's spinning around. And now he's. He's. He's wearing. He's not wearing his royal clothes, but he looks like one of the common people.
[00:27:49] This makes her mad.
[00:27:53] Come to her in a moment.
[00:27:54] But David's doing the right thing.
[00:27:57] He continues as he goes, as the ark comes into the city of David, as she looks down on him and despises it in her heart.
[00:28:06] Both a literal looking down and a figurative looking down. This judgment from this window.
[00:28:14] They brought in the ark, they set it in its place.
[00:28:18] There's offerings all over the place. These sacrifices are being made to the Lord, and they're feasting on these things as the offerings are given and then offered to the Lord, then distributed to the people. There's this giant festival of eating and celebrating together in fellowship before the Lord, as we will do at the Lord's table in a moment.
[00:28:41] He blesses the people in the name of the Lord. He gives to them something for their way home.
[00:28:48] Meat and bread, a cake of raisins. This is provision.
[00:28:53] This is plenty.
[00:28:55] This is celebration, right? This is after the big family meal and everybody goes home with Thanksgiving leftovers as opposed to, you know, I don't know if we have enough right. This is richness and plenty and charity and all under this umbrella of rejoicing under the great king.
[00:29:19] This is not David's victory. This is the Lord coming into his city among his people.
[00:29:27] So that's what happens, and that's the place that we want to be in. McCall, sadly, is not in that place.
[00:29:35] How? She's very sarcastic. How the king of Israel has honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants, his female servants, as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself.
[00:29:55] David reminds her that he is who he is because of what God has done, and that all the glory of Saul and that kingdom has passed away because of what the Lord has done, that he is who he is because of the Lord.
[00:30:14] And it is a call to her and to all of us to set our minds on this.
[00:30:21] David says, I'm not. He's essentially saying. When he says, I will make myself yet more contemptible, he's saying, the glorious things of this world do not matter to me. I will become even more abased in your eyes. This is like Saul, Saul, Paul saying that he would give up all the things that he has had in this world for the sake of knowing Jesus Christ.
[00:30:48] And this is how we all must be.
[00:30:53] The scriptures say Proverbs 14:12. There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.
[00:31:06] If we do not do as God has called us to do, we end in bitterness, in judgmentalism, in frustration, and ultimately in death. And under the Judgment of God, McCall is not able to have children.
[00:31:25] Uzzah does not have his life.
[00:31:28] The Lord is the giver and the taker of life.
[00:31:32] We must submit our hearts before Him.
[00:31:38] But how do we do this when the commands of the Lord are clear and yet we find ourselves having a hard time following them?
[00:31:50] When our guilt has overcome us so much that we become afraid of God and we don't know and. Or even don't want to turn to him, we don't want to be near Him. We become like Jonah's and other people who are hiding and running away.
[00:32:06] An impossible thing, but we do it still.
[00:32:10] What do we do when we feel the shame in our hearts and the fear in our hearts and the guilt in our hearts that makes us want to separate ourselves from God and just do something else to go another way? Or as McCall does, just reject the whole thing altogether and live for the glorious things of man and the things of this world?
[00:32:33] There's several things we can do, several things we ought to do.
[00:32:38] One is, of course, as I've been saying all along, is we must humble ourselves before God.
[00:32:44] We must humble ourselves before him as the One who is the Commander King, as the One who sets the instructions, as the One who creates the path, as the One who, at the beginning we read, is enthroned.
[00:32:59] He is enthroned on the cherubim, on the angels.
[00:33:03] This happens figuratively with the Ark. It's pictured as Ezekiel envisions these things in a vision, in this literal way, as the angels formed this giant cosmic gyroscope. As Ezekiel has this vision of God on his chariot, riding on the angels, depicted with the angels on the Ark in a physical way. Here the Lord is, as we read in the previous chapters, we see here. He is the Lord of hosts. He is the Commander King. And he exercises all that power in two ways. On behalf of his people, defending and protecting and keeping them, or against his enemies, destroying and removing them out of his way, and his plans as a way to protect his people.
[00:34:03] He is the Commander King. We must not, we cannot disregard Him. And. And there is only one side you should want to be on.
[00:34:13] On the side of him who loves you and protects you and watches over you.
[00:34:20] He is, we must recognize from this chapter, a powerful defender of his holiness. And so we have to ask ourselves, how can we, as unholy people, how can we, as disobedient people as Davids and Uzzah's and McCall's other names, how can we come into the presence of the living God?
[00:34:43] And the Scripture tells us there's only one answer, and that is through the way that he provides.
[00:34:51] And as we talked about earlier, there's obviously no other way than the way that he provides.
[00:34:57] What is the way that he provides? Jesus tells it to us when he says, I am the way, the truth and the life.
[00:35:07] No one comes to the Father except through Me.
[00:35:12] The sacrifices, the fellowship, the communion, the rejoicing, the ark itself, the movement of the priests, all of that in all kinds of rich and interesting and deep ways are fulfilled in this one person in Jesus Christ, who is called Emmanuel.
[00:35:36] God with us.
[00:35:38] Jesus, the Son of God, comes into this world and provides a way.
[00:35:44] God provides a way by giving his own life, by being the ultimate sacrifice, so that all of our sins can be removed, so that his righteousness can be imputed to us, so that we can go confidently, not afraid, not timorously, not shaking, not scared, not prideful, but confidently go before the throne of grace. Because of what Jesus has done, because what Jesus has said and because how Jesus invites each one of you, each one of you, saying, come unto Me and I will give you rest, I will heal you, I will forgive you, I will mend your broken hearts, and you will dwell in perfect communion with God forever through Him.
[00:36:44] Psalm16 says that at the right hand of God there are pleasures forevermore.
[00:36:54] He is that Father of the Prodigal Son. The story of the Prodigal Son who runs to us, the presence of the Father running to us and calling us and enwrapping us and enriching us and bringing us home.
[00:37:11] He does that through Jesus. It's through Jesus that we come to know the grace of the Lord.
[00:37:20] So know him, worship him, serve him, and do it all through our Savior, the Greater Son of David, the great King, and our God, Jesus Christ.
[00:37:34] Let's pray.
[00:37:35] Our Heavenly Father, we come to youo in Jesus name and we bow before youe. And we ask that yout would bless us, that we are. That we announce ourselves as your humble servants. And we ask that you would make us holy, already holy in Christ, able to come before you and growing out and continually growing in the work of your Spirit as you work in us, bringing us to that final day of glorification.
[00:38:10] Lord, we ask that you would be with us by Your Word and your Spirit every time that we gather together.
[00:38:20] And that you would be with us according to your grace.
[00:38:24] Because that's what we need in order to live.
[00:38:27] And we want to live.
[00:38:29] And we want to live not in our own strength, not in our own life, not in our own ways, but in you, in your will, in your path, in your glory, glory in your power, in your splendor, in your protection, in your hands. In your arms. We want to live on. You as our rock, as our redeemer, as our protector and fortress.
[00:38:49] Lord, you are our God and we are your people. And we give you praise for this. We pray all this in Jesus name, Amen.
