God's Covenant with David

[00:00:00] And ask God to bless the reading and preaching of his Word both here and elsewhere. [00:00:06] Particularly have in mind Pastor Lauer this morning who's preaching in the Concho Church. It was a blessing to them. We'll pray for him and the ministry there and other places throughout Arizona and the world. Let's pray together. [00:00:20] Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that you do give to us your word. [00:00:26] We thank you that by your Holy Spirit, we have your word and we hear it and even obey it. Lord, continue to strengthen us as followers of Christ, make us disciples and make new disciples from among us and throughout the world. [00:00:46] We thank you, Lord, for the access that we have to your Word in our own language. [00:00:53] We thank you for all the resources and teaching we have and of course, for your church, the work of you in the world, and the ministry of the Word that is given to us. That we might be equipped, that we might grow, that we might grow together, as you say in Colossians, in love. [00:01:13] We ask, Lord, that as we hear your word, you would establish us more firmly and assure us of our place in your kingdom, Lord. For those who do not yet belong, we ask that their hearts would be moved, pricked, compelled to come in hearing the invitation of Christ. [00:01:36] We pray this for ourselves, Lord. We also ask that the Lord Jesus and his peace through the cross would rule also in the hearts of others throughout our state and throughout the world. We pray for the saints in Concho this morning and Pastor Lauer's ministry there. We ask that you would encourage them and knit them together in love. [00:02:01] We also pray for our mission works and other churches throughout the state. We pray for our missionaries in various places throughout the world. [00:02:10] Lord, be with them. Gather in your electricity. May the preaching of your Word today be bold and clear and compelling in all these things. Lord, we see your amazing work, your amazing grace, and we bow our hearts before you. [00:02:29] We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. [00:02:36] Let's be seated and turn our attention to Second Samuel, Chapter 7. [00:02:48] Second Samuel 7. [00:03:00] Thank you for bearing with my voice this morning. I'm feeling well, just getting over a cold. It's taking a while. But the Lord is good and it's his words that we want to hear anyway. [00:03:14] So 2 Samuel 7. [00:03:22] A colossal chapter in terms of its importance in the Bible. Of course, every chapter of the Bible is important and absolutely essential. [00:03:38] But there are some chapters which stand out as super connected to so many other things and so many ways, and this is one of them. [00:03:51] 2nd Samuel 7. [00:03:54] In this chapter we have what is called, we sometimes called The Davidic covenant, or God's covenant with David. [00:04:03] It's so important and frankly overlooked in a lot of ways, but not in a lot of Christmas songs. It turns out David appears a lot, and for good reason. [00:04:16] He appears a lot because the Scriptures testify that the Lord Jesus Christ is the son of David. [00:04:23] So my plan is to Preach today on 2nd Samuel 7, get in our minds what this covenant is, especially in light of what we heard last week in 2 Samuel 6 and then through December, preach on this Davidic covenant through other passages of Scripture, focusing in particular on the Incarnation. [00:04:44] So we'll tie Christmas incarnation themes, the doctrine of the Incarnation and the work of Christ in his kingdom and other places of Scripture to what we are seeing here today and all the groundwork that has been laid in 1st Samuel up to here, really, Genesis up to here. But we'll just touch on that a little bit today. [00:05:07] So let's begin now with hearing God's word. [00:05:12] First David makes a request. God answers, and then David replies. [00:05:19] Now when the king lived in his house and the Lord had given him rest from all surround his surrounding enemies. The king said to Nathan the prophet, and see, now I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent. And Nathan said to the king, go, do all that is in your heart, for the Lord is with you. [00:05:38] But that same night the word of the Lord came to go tell my servant David, thus says the Lord, would you build me a house to dwell in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day. [00:05:55] But I have been moving about in a tent for my dwelling in all places where I have moved with all the people of Israel. Did I speak a word with any of the judges of Israel whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, why have you not built me a house of cedar? [00:06:12] Now therefore, thus you shall say to my servant David, Thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture from following the sheep, that you should be a prince over my people Israel. And I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you. And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and I will plant them so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. [00:06:44] And violent men shall afflict them no more. As formerly from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel, and I will give you rest from all your enemies. [00:06:54] Moreover, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. [00:06:59] When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body. And I will establish his kingdom. [00:07:10] He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom. For forever I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men and the stripes of the sons of men. [00:07:28] But my steadfast love will not depart from him as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. [00:07:36] And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established before forever. In accordance with all these words and in accordance with all this vision, Nathan spoke to David. [00:07:51] Then King David went in and sat before the Lord and said, who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house that you have brought me thus far? And yet this was a small thing in your eyes, O Lord God. [00:08:06] You have spoken also of your servant's house for a great while to come, and this is instruction for mankind, O Lord God. [00:08:15] And what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Lord God, because of youf promise and according to youo own heart, you have brought about all this greatness to make youe servant know it. [00:08:27] Therefore youe are great, O Lord God, for there is none like youe, and there is no God beside youe, according to all that we have heard with our ears. [00:08:37] And who is like your people? Israel, the one nation on earth whom God went to redeem to be his people, making Himself a name and doing for them great and awesome things, by driving out before your people, whom you redeemed for yourself from Egypt, a nation and its gods, and you established for yourself your people Israel, to be your people forever. And you, O Lord, became their God. [00:09:03] And now, O Lord God, confirm forever the word that you have spoken concerning your servant and concerning his house. And do as you have spoken, and your name will be magnified forever, saying, the Lord of hosts is God over Israel, and the house of your servant, David, will be established before you. [00:09:23] For you, O Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel has made this revelation to your servant, saying, I will build you a house. [00:09:32] Therefore your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to you. [00:09:36] And now, O Lord God, you are God and your words are true, and you have promised this good thing to your servant. [00:09:46] Now, therefore, may it please you to bless the house of your Servant, so that it may continue forever before you. [00:09:53] For you, O Lord God, have spoken. [00:09:56] With your blessing shall be the house of your servant, or shall the house of your servant be blessed forever? [00:10:05] Amen. [00:10:10] Well, as I said, this is an extremely important chapter in the Bible, because in it God brings to culmination many promises that he has made before. And He. [00:10:22] He strengthens those promises and opens them up even more, reveals more on this huge amount of revelation, deepening of his promise, opening of his promises, which we still depend on today. [00:10:40] These promises are not just to David, as He says, it is instruction. In verse 19, he says, and this is instruction for mankind, not just David, not just David's house, not just Israel and Judah, but mankind. [00:11:00] The things that are promised here have ripple effects on the entire world, on all of humanity. [00:11:12] There's a few things that pop up a lot in this chapter. Perhaps you notice them. One is the word forever, this enduring forever. Another is this phrase, O Lord God and Lord and God, and various combinations of this over and over again, especially in David's prayer. But before this, we see who is at the center of all this. We see who is making the covenant, who is keeping it, who is promising it, who is doing the work. And that's where our focus should be today, on the Lord, which is to say a king, a ruler, a covenant, a king, a commander, and a God. [00:11:53] God, a divine being, the one true, eternal, living God, Creator of the heavens and the earth. [00:12:03] And in these phrases we also see the Lord's name, that special name that he revealed to Moses when he said, I am who I am. [00:12:14] In our Bibles, it is capitalized in various places. So for example, in verse 27, where it says, O Lord of hosts, this is saying, if we transliterate it from Hebrew and try to pronounce it, we say Yahweh or Jehovah for you, Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel. [00:12:34] Or another instance in verse 28 when it says, O Lord God, their God, you see is in lower capital, small capital letters there, indicating that Yahweh is being used where God is. [00:12:46] So Yahweh of hosts or O Lord Yahweh, various instances of that. All of three of these things coming together and sort of interpenetrating one another in various ways as God's name and his names and the identification of him are raised up, up, up, because he's the king. [00:13:08] Here in this chapter, we see the centrality of God to the history of the world. [00:13:14] David's life, our lives. And we see this through his amazing promises and his powerful promises, a lot of people today are looking for things that sound like forever. [00:13:30] Things that feel enduring and authentic and stable. [00:13:37] They are looking, rightly so, for things that feel a more stable than our feeds, that we scroll through something that lasts more than two seconds and then cuts to another shot. [00:13:53] A government that doesn't isn't filled with corruption and problems. [00:14:01] Promises of people and institutions and family, and on and on and on the list goes. We have a constant stream of broken promises in our lives, a constant stream of emptiness and gimmicks. [00:14:15] Constant stream of a lot of things that make us numb, make us scoffers, make us perpetually stuck in irony and things like this. [00:14:27] And so we get hungry for something that is rooted, something that's enduring, something that's stable. [00:14:34] And here we have the Lord God Yahweh, King of the universe, God to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and David. God who dwelled with Adam and Eve and made promises to them after the fall. [00:14:48] God who would send the Lord, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to become man so that he might be our king forever. [00:14:59] He speaks. [00:15:01] He speaks to us. He reveals himself to us as. And he makes this amazing promise to David that knocks David to his knees, so to speak. [00:15:13] This prayer, which he recognizes has a certain amount of courage to it, he calls it a courageous prayer because he's asking God for some pretty bold things. [00:15:25] But he's not doing it because David's just this great prayer warrior or he's this super brave guy. [00:15:32] But he does it as he tells us, because God has said it, God has promised it. He hears the word of the Lord and he responds to the word of the Lord. He hears the word of the Lord and he trusts the word of the Lord. And because of that, that's why he prays like he does. [00:15:51] Ecstatic can be taken a wrong way. But in a lesser form of that and a more colloquial form of that, I'd say to David has a kind of ecstaticness to it. He's really excited. I don't like that word either, but he's expressive. How about that? He's oh Lord God, how have you done this? Your greatness, your awesomeness, who is like you, who am I? He's just pouring out his heart. [00:16:18] Can you imagine being in a situation like this where out of your heart you want to offer something to God, Right? [00:16:27] You are humbled by the place that he has brought you. And all of us should be humbled by the place he has brought us to. There's not a single one of us here that can't look at the mercies of God in our lives and say, I don't deserve this. [00:16:42] And he looks at the mercies that he's been given. He looks at the way that God has worked, and he says, this is kind of crazy. I dwell in this house of cedar that the king of Ty helped to build this amazing palace. And here, the Ark of God. Right, Chapter six, that we just read last week. [00:17:03] He's in a tent. [00:17:04] This doesn't make sense. This doesn't feel right. [00:17:08] I would want to build a temple for God. [00:17:12] So he goes to Nathan, he says, this Nathan says, sounds good to me. Go do what's in your heart. And then God intervenes, says no. [00:17:24] A reminder that sometimes God says no because. Well, I should say, always says no because he has something better for us. [00:17:33] And what does he do here? He says no. [00:17:36] And then he says, I'll build you a house. [00:17:40] You won't build me a house. I'll build you a house. And then he surrounds that with these. [00:17:46] This foundation of a promise in which the rest of the history of the world will be built from this point on. [00:17:56] So let's dig into that. What is, what do we see? [00:18:01] What is. What does God say? [00:18:05] Let's start in verse six. [00:18:07] First thing he says, he says, excuse me, Verse six. He. He says, I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent of my own dwelling. He goes on in verse seven, a little bit of a long sentence, but he goes on to say, in all this time, I never commanded anyone and I had plenty of opportunity, I never commanded anyone to build me a house. [00:18:36] I've not asked for this. [00:18:38] I don't need this. I'm not demanding this. [00:18:41] God is perfectly capable of doing what he wants to do when he wants to do it without having a house. [00:18:49] Now, there doesn't seem to be anything in David's heart from what I can detect. There doesn't seem to be anything in David's heart that would suggest that that's a problem for David. [00:18:58] David does not. David is not saying, we need to make God more powerful, so let's get him a temple, or we need to control God, so let's get him a temple. [00:19:08] But lots of other people do this. [00:19:10] And Israel's done it before and Israel will do it after. [00:19:14] God is not just saying this for David, but he's saying it for all people at all times. And when Solomon does build God a temple which God allows and directs, when Solomon, David's son Solomon, confesses in his prayer, in the prayer of dedication for the temple, that the temple cannot hold God, the temple cannot contain God, the temple cannot control God. [00:19:39] But God himself makes it really clear here. [00:19:44] He says, I've not lived in a house, and yet I have done all of these things. [00:19:50] There are people today who eagerly, and who call themselves Christians, who wear certain charms, do certain things, believing that if they do this or do that, a particular practice, that they will somehow be automatically protected from bad things, death, hell, various circumstances in life. They treat God as though he were some kind of charm or something that was controllable. [00:20:23] God uses means, but he is not bound to them in any way. And we see that in his actions in verse 8. [00:20:35] In verse 9, the Lord speaks. And he speaks first of what he did for David. What did he do for David while he was not dwelling in a tent or not dwelling in a temple? [00:20:47] He says, I took you from the pasture from following the sheep. [00:20:52] That's an interesting way of speaking, isn't it, of a shepherd, right? Who leads the sheep. [00:20:59] He's following the sheep. [00:21:02] I don't think this is saying anything bad of David or his shepherding abilities. He was a good shepherd from all accounts, but it does. There is a kind of humbleness in this way, right? And shepherds do, in a way, follow the sheep, right? They keep track of them and they go where they go. He's a. He's a man of the sheep. But God makes him a shepherd over people. [00:21:23] He says, I took you from the pasture from following the sheep, that you should be a prince over my people, Israel. [00:21:32] Again, God is going to make David a king. But this language of prince has a way of establishing God's authority over king, as we saw in the last chapter as well. [00:21:43] So not only did God raise up David in this great way to be from a shepherd of sheep to a shepherd of the people of God. But then we see in verse nine, he says, I have been with you wherever you went. [00:21:55] More than that, I have cut off your enemies before you. So these are all God's, establishing his history, his past actions and his right to rule as the covenant Lord. [00:22:08] Now think back for a second. [00:22:10] Think back on the things that God did in various battles with the Philistines. Protection from Saul, protection from people who would seek to hurt David secretly, protection from the Philistines, from Goliath of Gath. All these things over and over, God has protected David from his enemies. [00:22:32] What else will he do? Verse 9 continues, I will make for you a great name like the great ones of the earth. [00:22:40] This was a long time ago. [00:22:43] A lot of people have passed since David lived. [00:22:48] Let me ask you, has God kept his promise? Did God make David's name great? [00:22:56] We're not talking about some kind of random, unknown, obscure Bible fact here. [00:23:04] We're talking about something that is someone who is known across the world and has from generation to generation to generation. [00:23:12] King David, one of the great ones of the earth. [00:23:16] God keeping his promise, raising his name up, and it keeps going. [00:23:23] God keeps speaking to David. Verse 10. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and I will plant them so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. They will be protected from enemies. [00:23:37] He will give them rest. [00:23:39] He will give them peace. [00:23:40] And then God returns to David at the end of verse 11, and he says, the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make for you a house. [00:23:50] Now here he uses the language of house to also speak of household, of offspring. [00:23:59] He says, when your days are fulfilled and you lie down, I will raise up your offspring after you, who will come from your body his own offspring. He will establish his kingdom. And through this offspring a house would be built. And there we start getting that language forever. In verse 13, I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. [00:24:21] Not just establish that kingdom forever, but fellowship with God, care and protection. I will be to him a father. He will be to to him a son. [00:24:34] Similar language that reminds us of things back in the garden with Adam and Eve, when God created man in his own image. [00:24:43] That image language is used also of Adam with his children. [00:24:47] Image language that reminds us of sonship and the way that sons are born to men in a similar way, but of course, not exact. [00:25:00] Man is considered by God to be his son, bearing his image and receiving inheritance from the Lord. [00:25:13] This means that God is reclaiming man as his own. [00:25:18] He's establishing man as his own. [00:25:22] He is going to be to this particular king and to all who are under him a father. [00:25:29] There will be discipline for the king. [00:25:32] There will be discipline for the king when he commits iniquity. Verse 14 says, but this discipline will not be rejection. His steadfast love will not depart as he took it from Saul. [00:25:45] But finally, verse 16, Your house, David, your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. [00:25:54] Your throne shall be established forever. [00:25:58] So these are the promises. [00:26:00] He's going to establish a king from David's line who will establish a throne and a Kingdom forever, an eternal kingdom. This is God's promise to his people. [00:26:15] In all this promise, God promises not just this king, but he promises the king a people. [00:26:20] He promises the king a place. [00:26:22] He promises the kingdom a place that is paradise. So keep going on our P's and we'll add one more. He also promises them presence, communion, fellowship. [00:26:36] This, my friends, is perfection. [00:26:39] This is everything. [00:26:41] Peace, safety, communion, fellowship with God, peace from enemies in a great place under his authority, before him forever and ever. This is the thing that Adam and Eve lost. [00:26:55] This is the thing that we've all been hoping to regain. And it's going to come through the fulfillment of this promise in establishing a king through David's line. [00:27:09] Despite the sin of man, despite Adam and Eve, despite the sin we were born into, despite our own sins, God has promised to give us not just individual life, but to place us in the kingdom of God and that we might dwell with him forever. [00:27:28] God's promise is not just to bring us back into Eden and to put us back under a test, but to establish us with him in heaven forever. [00:27:38] This is a promise he made to Adam and Eve when he promised that there would be one who would rule over all creation. It's the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham when he said that kings would come from you. This is a promise fulfilling that and his covenant there. And now we see that there is this next covenant, this unfolding of the promises of grace. In 2nd Samuel 7, there is a condition, though the Son must keep the covenant. [00:28:07] The Son of David must fulfill the promises, must fulfill the obligations he has before God. [00:28:18] Deuteronomy 17 warns the kings of Israel not to amass for themselves wealth, women and weapons. [00:28:30] They are not to amass for themselves these things and take their security in the things, in the political and cultural powers of this world, but to trust on God. The kings are to write down the law of God, hide it on their hearts. [00:28:48] Solomon seems to do this. [00:28:51] The kingdom expands. There's so much peace. [00:28:55] And then he does exactly what he's not supposed to do, and everything falls apart. And that happens over and over and over again. And so what we have throughout the Scriptures is everybody wondering, will God keep his promise to David? [00:29:08] This hope that he's just set in our hearts, this hope in which David is feeling so exuberant about, will God keep that promise? [00:29:17] And of course he does. [00:29:20] In who? [00:29:22] Jesus. [00:29:23] He keeps that promise in Jesus and because it's in his Son, in his own Son, who is both the Son of David, the Son of Man, but Also the Son of God, eternally begotten, having all things divine from the Father, and eternally so, because He, Jesus, is himself, God with us. [00:29:50] There is zero chance that this promise will fall apart. [00:29:56] Jesus not only will not commit iniquity like the other sons before him did, but he will bear our iniquity and all of those whom he came to save. [00:30:09] He will take on the sins of his people so that nothing can keep them from the presence of God. [00:30:19] He will break down that dividing wall. He will. [00:30:23] He will have victory over his enemies, over sin, which we've talked about, over death, over the devil, and over all of the devil's servants who would seek to break apart the bonds between the Lord and his Anointed one. [00:30:38] God keeps that promise. [00:30:43] And so we belong to David's kingdom because we belong to the King of David's line. [00:30:52] We are a part of this kingdom. [00:30:55] We are belonging to Israel, to Abraham. How? [00:31:00] Through faith in the promises. [00:31:03] Because what ends up happening is that this promise that is given here to David is not just for Israel, as we seen touches of in other places as established in Abraham, but this promise is for all who, as Psalm 2 says, kiss the Son, for all who come to the Lord and the King of the universe and rely on him. [00:31:25] So God gives to us all these things, paradise, presence with him, communion and fellowship with him and his people. [00:31:37] So how do we respond to this? [00:31:40] Well, first of all, understanding this, we look for its connections in the Scriptures. We look for the ways in which these promises unfold and the ways that they reveal themselves in Jesus. And we'll do that forever and in the coming month. [00:31:56] The second thing we can do, I think, is we can follow David's lead. [00:32:01] David here in his prayer, offers for us, as God records for us, for our benefit, a very proper reaction to when the God of the universe unloads a truckload of promises on you and says, though you were nothing, I've made you everything and will establish you forever in my kingdom. [00:32:26] What kinds of things? How do we respond? Beloved, one thing we could say is a lot of humility. [00:32:33] Verse 18. Our hearts should be filled with words like this. Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house that you have brought me thus far? [00:32:44] At some point, all of our houses, our family history, goes back to someone who was worshiping the sun, trees, rivers, themselves a king. [00:32:59] This is our family history. Even Abraham himself, this was his family history. [00:33:08] Who are we, O Lord? [00:33:10] What is our house that you have brought us thus far? [00:33:16] Humility, recognition of God and belief that this belongs to us, that these promises here in 2nd Samuel are for us. As I pointed out before, in verse 19, David says, you have spoken also of your servant's house for a great while to come, and this is instruction for mankind, O Lord God. [00:33:40] Our response is to believe this and to trust him and to know that this is our story and we belong to by his grace and by his promises. In this verse 21 says, because of your promise and according to your own heart, you have brought out all this greatness. You have made it known to your servant. This gives us, beloved, opportunities to praise God, to recognize that it's not because of our works, it's not because we were great shepherds of sheep or followers of sheep. It's not because we were such awesome worshipers of God that we have been saved. But like Israel, like all of these things that are happening, it's because of his promise according to his own heart, the free counsel of his will, the determinations that he has made. That is how we have become as great as we are. [00:34:31] And great not by the definitions and things of this world, but great in the eyes of God, established forever. [00:34:40] Verses 22 through 28 give us all kinds of examples of praise, praising God, who is like you, who has redeemed your people, may your name be magnified forever, saying, the Lord of hosts is God over Israel, and the house of your servant will be established forever. These are confessions of faith. These are the things that we say, the things that we pray, the things that we believe, the things that we hope in. And, and we do it. And we say it courageously. [00:35:10] Even when the church is persecuted, even when we come under attack, even when our lives are threatened, we do not give up. But we put our faith in our great covenant, Lord and keeper, our awesome and powerful and promising king. [00:35:28] And then finally we. [00:35:31] We make our requests based on his promises, as David says in verse 28. And now, O Lord God, you are God and your words are true, and you have promised this good thing to your servant. Now therefore, may it please you to bless the house of your servant so that it may continue. Before you, David speaks and prays the will and the word of the Lord after him. And that's what we do. That's what we do here in our worship services. That's what we do in our family, worship at home, in our personal devotions. We hear what God says and we respond to what he says. [00:36:11] We ask him to do all his holy will on earth as it is in heaven. [00:36:17] And we do it not with double minds or half hearts. But believing and knowing who God is and what he has said and that he does not lie, this brings us all assurance of his promises, assurance of who we are and who he is. That's how we respond. [00:36:38] We respond with love, we respond with faith, we respond with hope. We respond with trust in him and what the great things that he is doing for us. [00:36:51] This is a rooted thing. [00:36:54] This is a forever thing. This is an enduring thing. And so when your hearts get distracted and sad and frustrated by the fickle things of this world, when you get kind of anxious and you're looking around for something to trust in, for someone to depend on, for someone to pour your heart out and give your whole life over to, here he is, the Lord God, Yahweh, God of Abraham, Isaac, God of Israel, Jacob, God of David, and the Lord of us, our God, our King. Promises given to us through King Jesus. [00:37:46] You will not find this kingdom in this world. [00:37:51] You will not ever. [00:37:55] Because Jesus says, my kingdom is not of this world. [00:37:59] And he is our king. [00:38:02] So put your faith in him and let us be at peace. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we bow our hearts before you and we celebrate your great name. Who is like you, who is powerful like you, who promises like you, who rules over your people like you. And who are we to receive these things? [00:38:25] Our hearts were born in darkness, our minds filled with confusion and ignorance, our wills constantly affecting, bending and breaking away from you. [00:38:41] And yet we have become worshipers. [00:38:44] Yet we have become citizens. [00:38:47] And we call you our God. [00:38:51] This is because of your amazing grace. [00:38:56] This is because your words are true. This is because you are powerful and good and and a great king above all kings. [00:39:06] This is because you have fulfilled these promises in the Son of David, who died for us so that we might live in him forever. May the Lord Jesus, King of heaven and earth, reign forever and ever. And may he never depart from us. [00:39:26] Lord, we pray for your presence. We pray for your protection. We pray for the coming a paradise that is promised for us in the heavenly places. [00:39:37] Lord, we ask that in these things you would put away all that is earthly in us, all that is fearful in us, all that is sinful in us, that we might be more and more like you. And we look forward to receiving in full the promises that you have made the great inheritance of, that we will receive as sons of God. [00:40:03] We pray this in Jesus name, our only hope. Amen. [00:40:09] Let's.