Episode Transcript
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Please remain standing. And let's turn
to Mica, Chapter Seven. We will
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be hearing the last few verses of
this book tonight. Mike a seven verses
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fourteen through twenty. The last words
of the Prophet here are first a word
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of prayer and then of praise.
Let's give our attention to God's word.
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Shepherd your people with your staff,
the flock of your inheritance, who dwell
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alone in a forest, in the
midst of a garden land. Let them
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grays and Bashan and in Gilead,
as in the days of old, as
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in the days when you came out
of the land of Egypt, I will
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show them marvelous things. The nations
shall see and be ashamed of all their
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might. They shall lay their hands
on their mouths, their ears shall be
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deaf. They shall lick the dust
like a serpent, like the crawling things
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of the earth. They shall come
trembling out of their strongholds. They shall
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turn in dread to Yahweh our God. They shall be in fear of you,
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who is a God like you,
pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for
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the remnant of his inheritance. He
does not retain his anger forever. Because
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he delights insteadfast love. He will
again have compassion on us. He will
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tread our iniquities underfoot. You will
cast all our sins into the depths of
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the sea. You will show faithfulness
to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham,
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as you have sworn to our fathers
from the days of old. On Man,
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my God, bless his word.
Please be seated. So, as
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I mentioned, we can divide this
last portion of the book of Mica into
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a prayer, a section of prayer
and then of praise, roughly, and
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there's a lot of overlap with these
two ideas, so we don't have to
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be two fast to us about it. Nevertheless, we have a call to
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the Lord in Verse Fourteen. Shepherd
your people, Mica says, and continues
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that through verse seventeen, and then
the praise verses eighteen through twenty. Want
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to look at these two portions of
this passage this evening and consider what it
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is God is saying about himself to
us, what he's teaching us and reminding
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us of. The word here begins, of course, with a call to
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God to shepherd us. This is
a reminder, as we've considered several times
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throughout the book is that he is
a king, he is like he is
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a ruler who guards and protects,
feeds his people, he guides us,
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and this is something that Israel has
been very much lacking, something that they
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have been needing because they are shepherds, have been evil, have been taking
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them away from the things of the
Lord, taking them into paths of unrighteousness.
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And so this final call of the
book is to look to God as
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our final resting place, to look
to God as our hope, as our
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leader, as our king, shepherd
your people with your staff, the flock
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of your inheritance, and then he
gives to us this this very calming,
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I think, image. Who Dwell
alone in a forest, in the midst
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of a garden? A lot of
times we don't think about being alone.
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Is Sort of a peaceful thing.
Maybe who, especially in a forest,
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but here the picture is that the
people are that safe. Right. Perhaps
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you have had an experience, an
opportunity to wander off into the woods or
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along a beach by yourself, feeling
very much at peace, feeling safe and
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protected. This is the image here, a little lamb wandering around in the
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forest all by itself, not afraid
because it's shepherd is there for it,
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caring for it, protecting for it. There's no reason for a lamb to
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be afraid, even I'm in this
forest, because ultimately this lamb is in
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the midst of a garden land,
a wonderful, wonderful image. Let them
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graze and Bashan and Gilead, as
the days of old. There is this
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picture that is recalled of God bringing
his people out of Egypt, rescuing this
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flock, this beloved people, out
of slavery and out of bondage, to
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be their king, that no longer
pharaoh and the false gods that he would
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serve would rule over them, but
God would be their king and he would
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take them into good pastures, that
promised land, as in the days of
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old, Verse Fifteen says, when
you came out of the land of Egypt,
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I will show them marvelous things.
The Christian faith is one that very
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much looks backwards in order to look
forwards over and over again, or at
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least twice. Here there are calls
explicitly to think about the days of old,
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and in other ways it points to
this, like in Verse Twenty,
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You Will Show faithfulness to Jacob and
steadfast love to Abraham, as you have
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sworn to our fathers from the days
of old. Do you catch that?
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You will show future, you will
show faithfulness to Jacob, you will show
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steadfast love to Abraham? Why?
Because he has sworn to do so in
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the days of old. One of
the most important things that the scripture emphasizes
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over and over again about God's love
is that it is steadfast. It's steadfast
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he and because of that we can
lean on him when we are afraid,
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when we are terrified, we can
go to him and find comfort. The
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same is true when we consider our
internal states. When we are ashamed of
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who we are, when we are
terrified of who we are, when we
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are afraid and abhorring who we are, we can look to God who,
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as in verse eighteen it says,
pardons iniquity, he passes over transgression,
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he does not retain his anger forever. Why? Because he's really, really
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happy in his steadfast love. It's
what makes him excited, as he puts
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it, in the human way.
For us to understand him, there is
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something in God. The nature of
his love is such that it continually pours
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out. It never is overwhelmed by
darkness, it's never overwhelmed by sin or
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death, and the way that we
can feel, or that we often feel,
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his love is steadfast. And so
the prayer is, of course,
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in these times of judgment that the
people are about to face, a Micah
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calls to God and Praise Shepherd your
people. Of course God does do this.
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He watches over them, in part
through the Prophet Mica, by giving
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them these words, by continuing to
keep in them a remnant of people that
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speak and teach the word of God, all the way up until we have
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a john the Baptist proclaiming that the
day of the Lord is at hand,
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that the shepherd of his people,
this Messiah that has been promised and hope
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for, is about to come.
And indeed he does come. John,
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the Gospel of John, tells us
that Jesus is our good shepherd, he
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is the one, he is the
fulfillment of these prayers in their final way,
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in which God comes to his people
by even becoming one of them,
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by becoming men. These are marvelous
things, as Mica says in First Fifteen.
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Now, for those who trust in
the Lord, who wait on the
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Lord, this is, of course, our great joy, this is our
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great hope. We are looking past
at God's promises in the days of old
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and having confidence in his character for
the future times and for the present as
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well. But, as we have
seen over and over again in Mica,
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to those who would rebel against this
love, those who would turn away from
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God's Love, those who have opportunity
to receive it and then fight instead,
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they will be destroyed. Verse Sixteen
says the Nations shall see and be ashamed
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of all their might. This is
an amazing to me, anyway, in
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an amazing way of phrasing this.
When I read this, I always expected
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to be ashamed of their weakness.
Right here they are so pitiful before the
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Lord right that, having lost the
battle and these sorts of things in front
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of him. But it goes even
farther than that. They're not only ashamed
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of their weakness, but they're even
ashamed of their might, because their might
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is their weakness. They look at
their strongholds and they say, I got
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to get out of this thing.
They come trembling verse seventeens out of their
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strongholds like a bad kid, you
know, throwing rocks at an anthill is
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thends comes scurring out of it.
God, of course, verses not bad,
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but good when he comes in judgment
on the people of the Earth.
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He comes because of their wickedness and
their unrighteousness and all the things that we've
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been reading about in Mica, the
taking of vibes, the oppression of the
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poor, the storing up of treasures
through by taking advantage of people that are
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supposed to be protected. These people
that feel so strong and so secure in
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themselves will lay their hands on their
mouths, they shall lick the dust like
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a serpent, like the crawling things
of the earth. Are Strong reminder,
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of course, of the curse on
the God places on Satan himself, and
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a reminder to us that are are
battles that we face when people come against
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us, as Herod did against Mary
and Joseph and Jesus, or as the
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Jewish leadership did when they came to
a crucify Christ, and as the Romans
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and others did when they went to
a persecute and murderer the apostles, that
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ultimately these things, this battle against
Christ and his people is a spiritual battle.
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It is one against the forces of
darkness. Those who rage war against
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the Lord and his anointed and his
saints are like the serpent of old and
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they will be like the serpent of
old, judged, licking the dust and
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ground, crawling on the earth and
condemned forever. As the mighty power of
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the Lord comes on that Great Day, they shall turn in dread, like
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a says in verse seventeen, to
the Lord, our God. You remember
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the battle of Elijah on Mount Carmel. These this supposed battle, I guess,
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between bail and Yahway, who will
win? Of course Yahway wins,
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as he pours down fire on the
altar and all the prophets of bail licking
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their self inflicted wounds, embarrassed and
ashamed. That Lord who comes in that
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judgment on wickedness and on evil.
He is our God, he is our
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shepherd, he is for us.
What do we have to fear? Why
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should we tremble for them? Why
should we pay bribes? Why should we
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bow the knee to the enemies of
God, whether they come in the form
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of a government or a person or
an institution, a teaching why? What
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purpose is there in that? What
what possible gain is there in that,
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when this God is our God,
when the victory has been one for us,
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and he will come in judgment and
they shall turn in dread and we
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shall have great victory. This is, of course, not a moment my
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could concludes in his praise, not
for self confidence, but for confidence in
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God, because, if it were
not for his pardoning our iniquity and passing
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over transgression, we would be just
like them, we would be just like
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our enemies, because we were the
enemies of God. We deserved his punishment,
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we would deserved his wrath, just
like every other person who's born in
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Adam. Our hope is in God, who is gracious. Our hope is
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in God, who is merciful,
who sent his son to be this great
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shepherd king, who would rise on
this kingly cross in order to defeat his
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and our enemies. And so when
we are weak, when we are scared
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and when we feel the weight of
our own sins and we struggle against the
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things of this world, we must, we must, we must turn to
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our shepherd in prayer and in praise, asking him to do the things that
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he has promised to do according to
his will, which is recorded for us
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right here, and praising him for
who he is, having confident voices and
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confident lips, saying who is like
you, who is a God like you,
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and we do so not in pride
that we got it all right or,
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I'm with confidence that somehow we in
our self, abundance and the cruel
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of things, are stand before God, but because we are sinners saved by
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His grace. We come to him
knowing that he has steadfast love, here's
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our friend, that he has compassion
on us. We come to him relying
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on those promises of old, to
Abraham, to Jacob, promises which has
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been which have been fulfilled in Christ. Let us pray
