The Lord and His Anointed

[00:00:06] Amen. Let's continue our prayers now as we seek God's blessing, as we come to the reading and preaching of his word. Our heavenly Father, we thank you that you have called us into this room, this place today, that you have also called us into heavenly places where we are seated with Christ and worship with, worship with the angels, with the Lord interceding for us. Lord, we thank you that you have blessed us with your word that we might come to know you, to dwell in you, abide in you, now and forever. We ask that you would help us to hear, to understand, to believe, to act, and to share this good news with the world. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. [00:00:59] Please remain standing, and let's turn to psalm two. Last time I preached on psalm one, psalms one and two being an introduction to the psalter, psalm two. Today, as we continue to consider David, the davidic covenant, the things that God did during that time, and the ways that it's expressed in various ways in the psalms in connection with the rest of scripture. [00:01:30] So, psalm two. This morning, let's hear God's word. [00:01:37] Why do the nations rage and the people's plot in vain? [00:01:42] The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. [00:01:57] He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, as for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. [00:02:13] I will tell of the decree. [00:02:15] The Lord said to me, you are my son today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. [00:02:32] Now therefore, o kings, be wise. Be warned, o rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. [00:02:54] You may be seated. [00:03:23] Have you ever received a wedding announcement? And in that wedding announcement, there's something in, maybe on one of the pages or if it's on a website, one of the things that are there, and it says our story. [00:03:39] I've seen this with increasing frequency, and I like it. It's nice. [00:03:44] You get to hear a little bit of the backstory of the couple, how they met and where they met a little bit about their families or something. For those who are close to them, it's just nice reminders and a reaffirmation of what's been happening in their lives. But for many who come to the wedding, it fills in some missing information. [00:04:06] Sometimes, you know, one side but not the other, these kind of things. [00:04:11] Psalm two does a similar thing. It gives us, in some ways the backstory of a relationship that helps us understand a number of other things. A psalm two, as we see in verse seven, is spoken in the voice of the son. [00:04:33] Psalm two seven says, I will tell of the decree. [00:04:38] The Lord said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. [00:04:44] And so we hear, we have the words of the son of who? [00:04:51] The son of God. Clearly the Lord Yahweh is mentioned from the very beginning, both in psalm one and in psalm two. [00:05:03] It's very clear that the Lord here is the ultimate king, but something special. He's doing something. God is doing something special through the son. [00:05:15] The Lord said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. [00:05:21] Well, that leads us to an interesting question. Who's the son? [00:05:26] Right. This is the son of God. [00:05:30] Who is he? [00:05:32] Well, there are a number of sons of God that are mentioned in the scripture. Adam is one and the first one that's mentioned, he is made in the image of God. He is born in God's image, much like Adam's own son bears his image. As the scriptures say, adam bore God's image. They're not exactly the same, of course. [00:05:58] God doesn't birth forth finite spiritual children or something like that. Adam is not himself a God, right? He does not have the same nature as God. And yet nevertheless, the Lord thinks of him and talks about him and wants Adam to understand himself as that way, one who is expected to bear the image of the father, the father who made him, the God who made him. [00:06:28] Adam, of course, fails in his duties as a son. He fails to inherit the promises that are given to him. He fails to obey on the obligations that were set on him in his sonship. He does not bear the image of God as he oughta in the call that God puts on him. And because of that, he and all of Adam's sons after him come under a curse. [00:06:59] Another son, of course, a son of God that is mentioned in scripture, although in another way is Jesus. [00:07:07] Perhaps when you think son of God, this is the first thing you think of, and rightly so. [00:07:12] Jesus is the son of God as the eternally begotten one. [00:07:18] One who receives all things from God, who is one with God. [00:07:25] We know from the scriptures that all that the father has, the son has and has been given to him. [00:07:32] We've talked about that in our evening services recently. So we've reflected on the triune nature of Goddesse. But this second person of the Trinity, eternally begotten. [00:07:44] And here this language recalls other passages in scripture. You are my son. Today I have begotten you. It reminds us perhaps of many passages. One maybe Jesus baptism in the Jordan. When the holy spirit descends on Jesus like a dove, a voice is heard from heaven and God says, you are my son. [00:08:10] This is my son, with whom I am well pleased. [00:08:14] We could point to the Jordan and the baptism as being somewhat like birth imagery and things like that, but we won't get into all of that. [00:08:23] We also know, of course, that the Lord Jesus, when he took humanity, when he took a human nature on himself or to himself, was in fact begotten according to his humanity. [00:08:37] He was born of a woman, born under the law, born as a man, fully human. And in that way he became a son of God in a second sense, much like Adam was a son of God. And this is good news for us because the scriptures tell us that Jesus is a second Adam, or even more precisely, the last Adam. He comes to do the sonship things that Adam failed to do. He comes to do the things that Adam failed to do so that we can be saved. As we confessed earlier, he became man to save man. Right? Not male, but mankind. Right. He became human to save all of us from our sins. [00:09:29] This is an amazing thing. [00:09:33] Well, there's a third and there are more. [00:09:36] I mean, I'll mention two more. One, of course, us, both men and women's. The scripture refers to us as sons of God. [00:09:45] Why does it call us sons of God? Because the scripture says that when we put our faith in Christ, we become like co heirs with him. [00:09:55] We become people that are united to him in such a way that we are treated like Jesus is treated. This is, of course, a giant gift. How this happens in relation to sonship actually has a term, adoption. [00:10:13] We are adopted into the family of God. We receive these gifts, all of his grace, and we become co heirs with Christ of the eternal life that he earns as the second or the last Adam. [00:10:30] Amazing. [00:10:32] Well, one of the other sons of God in the scriptures is of course, David. [00:10:39] David is also referred to as a son. And in the way that he is called to rule and bear God's image under him. David is a son of God, as the kings are called, to rule over God's people, to rule over them in righteousness, as God's under shepherds, as God's servants. [00:11:06] And so there's a lot of different ways to read this and understand this. [00:11:12] I think the simplest way to read it and understand it is to see it primarily focused on David. [00:11:20] Not primarily, we could say in the first instance focused on David speaking to him most directly, but then pointing us forward to Jesus and in some ways backward to Adam and also in connection to us. [00:11:35] This is a little complicated, and I understand that, but it's important that we understand this, because if we understand this, you are able to read so many more of the psalms with understanding, so many more of the scriptures with understanding. [00:11:52] How do we sing this psalm, for example? How do we pray this psalm? Do we hear it merely as David's distant words that simply talk about his life and the things that happened at that time with maybe some disconnected connection to us? [00:12:10] Do we hear them just as the words of Jesus? Is there some way in which we can say these words ourselves? Is there some sense in which we have been begotten of God? Is there some sense in which we are considered sons? [00:12:25] And the answer to this is, yes, we can think about these things and think about them in these different ways, but we have to do them in a way that has understanding, in a way that thinks carefully about these things. [00:12:39] So let's do that first by thinking about the other actors. And I don't mean that in the sense of pretending and putting on a play, but as those who take action, we could call them verbers if we wanted to. That's a little weird. So we'll call them actors. Right. People who take action or receive actions. In this psalm, first we have goddess, right? God is a part of this psalm. We see him in verse four sitting in heaven and laughing. Why is he laughing, kids? Did somebody tell him a funny joke? No, he's laughing with a kind of scary laughing, a kind of mocking, a kind of anger, a holy anger, a kind of come at me if you dare. A challenge laughing, a confidence laughing. We read in the second half of that verse, the Lord holds them in derision. He will speak to them in his wrath. He will terrify them in his fury. [00:13:52] In other words, he looks at these people, which is another set of actors in our psalm. He looks at these people and he is not threatened. [00:14:03] Now they think they're threatening. Let's think about what they're doing. These enemies of the Lord, described as nations described as peoples, described as kings and rulers. They do what? [00:14:18] They rage. [00:14:20] Intense anger. [00:14:24] Intense anger. [00:14:26] They plot. As a result of that rage, they set themselves right. They establish themselves in their plotting, in their planning. They take counsel together. They're coordinating. They're working. They're building to do a particular thing. They don't want to just rage and plot, but they want to take action. They want to accomplish something, and they are set in their hearts and in their plans to do it. What is the thing that these people will accomplish according to their plans? [00:15:02] They desire to go against the Lord and against his messiah. Translated, anointed here in the ESV, against the Lord and against his messiah, saying, let us burst their bonds apart and cast their cords from us. [00:15:24] Their bonds could possibly refer to the bonds between the Lord and his anointed one, separating God and his messiah, God and his king. [00:15:37] And then the second part of that verse most clearly refers to the obligations and bonds that the Lord puts on these people. [00:15:48] Perhaps it refers just to the people alone. [00:15:51] Either way, these raging nations, these raging, plotting, setting angry people are in for a big surprise. [00:16:04] They think they've all got it together. They think they're going to accomplish this thing. But then we get to verse four, and we see the Lord laughing. [00:16:15] Have you ever walked by a yard? You're going on a walk, and there's some little Chihuahua that looks like. Well, as Chihuahuas look, and it's barking and it's raging and it's angry at you, and it's gonna take you down, and you just go, okay, and you walk away. Right? [00:16:39] It's not going to happen. It's not going to work. You know, with one swift kick, this great enemy of yours will be done. If it tries to attack you, it will not succeed. [00:16:55] All the more so between anyone who decides to come against the Lord. The scripture and history are full of examples of great, powerful people, the most powerful people that have ever lived, ever existed, totally, utterly failing to break apart the bonds of the Lord, the bonds that he has on them, and the bonds that tie him and his people together, him and his king, him and his people, him and his citizens. [00:17:33] You can almost just, you know, if you put all of scripture right on a map and just sort of ran or on a board, just randomly put your finger on something, you could find something pretty quickly. You could think of pharaoh, for example. [00:17:48] How hard hearted was he? [00:17:51] Right? I will not let those people go. I will not listen to the Lord enduring plague after plague after plague after plague, so strong in his resolve, so intense in keeping God's people for his own, in not letting them go and worship as God had called them to do. [00:18:16] Not going to happen, he said. [00:18:18] And he endured a lot, and he tried a lot, and all of it, his people suffered. He suffered. And in the end, he and all of his chariots got washed away in the water as they tried to pursue God's people through a miracle. [00:18:37] In some ways, the more aggressive that people become against the Lord, oftentimes, the greater their downfall is. [00:18:50] You could think of Haman when we think of downfalls first with an upraising right. If you remember the story of him in Esther, plotting, taking counsel, manipulating all kinds of things to destroy Mordecai and the Jews. [00:19:07] And everything seems so solid to everyone, to Mordecai, to Esther, to the king, to haman himself, to his wife. Everything solid seems so until it's not. And instantly, all of his plans, all of everything falls apart, and he's hanging himself on the gallows that he made for Mordecai just a little bit earlier, over and over and over again. We see examples of these in scriptures of people plotting, making plans, raging against the Lord, seeming to succeed for a time and then utterly failing. [00:19:53] Another actor that we see in this psalm is, of course, the son God, working through human servants in this world, establishing them to rule over his people and rule over the whole world. [00:20:14] As I said, this was the initial plan for Adam, right? To be fruitful, to multiply, to expand that garden, and to rule in God's name as God's son world. [00:20:26] Adam failed at this. [00:20:29] There were after Adam, the Lord would raise up people from time to time, promising to Abraham a son who would accomplish these things. And that seemed to come in David. That's one reason. This, I think, is here at the beginning of the psalms, many of which are written by David, many of which speak to this time in God's, in the history of God's people, where the things in psalm two seem to be happening, the nations fleeing the Philistines, the Canaanites, many being broken under the rule of God's son, of God's king David, ruling and conquering the land to make the nations a heritage. [00:21:21] And yet, despite all the anticipation, despite all the things that seem to be coming under that davidic kingdom, we do sense a little bit of a disconnect when he says, ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. [00:21:41] God promised that to David. [00:21:44] He promised it through his son. He promised this eternal kingdom to one of David's sons, if that son lived and established and ruled in righteousness. [00:21:58] The problem is that neither David nor Solomon nor any of the sons following from that ever did that. [00:22:05] And therefore this promise in some ways still stands. [00:22:10] It remained standing, this hope of the glory of the Lord being accomplished not just in this region or that region, but comprehensively to the ends of the earth. [00:22:26] Of course, the Lord owns everything from the very beginning, or else these enemies wouldn't be under the authority of the Lord. They wouldn't sense these bonds, right? But there's a sense in which the Lord possesses. And there's another sense in which the Lord possesses. There's a sense in which he rules and reigns over all people, having authority over all things. And there's another sense in which he rules and reigns, in which there is no more rebellion, in which there is no more frustration, in which the kingdoms, the kingdom of God, this kingdom of peace and of righteousness is perfect utopia, this heaven, this blessed place, that is where there is no more frustration, no more wars, no more raging. And that is what this king is to establish. [00:23:23] Which is why, although we can see David holding fast to this promise, in a way referencing himself and his sons, because the promise was to him, ultimately, if David sang this psalm, he would be singing of Christ, who is David's son, who did come one day and did, as we know, bring all of these things and is bringing all of these things into their fulfillment. [00:23:52] The Lord, in an amazing way, our Lord and savior, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. He fulfills these things in ways that for many people for a long time were kind of unimaginable things into which the scriptures say angels longed to look, tried to figure out, wondered how it was all going to happen. [00:24:16] We have the great benefit of looking back on history and seeing what God has done in Jesus Christ. [00:24:24] He not only brought his son in, he not only brought his son into this world, made him as this last Adam, made him as the son of David to fulfill, excuse me, fulfill the promises to David, but he made him as one to fulfill these promises perfectly, to make the ends of the earth his possession. [00:24:51] And we've begun to see that happening already as the, as the word of the Lord goes out into the world and as the gentiles are brought in, people professing their faith, professing their obedience and love to the Lord because of his salvation of them, because of the message of Christ, this is going on right now as we speak. We are a part of that work, that God is doing. And one day, one day he promises to bring it into full completion, when we will belong to the new heavens and the new earth, when heaven and hell will be clear and obvious. And where the people who had plotted against the Lord, the people who refused to accept the messiah, the people who raged against the enemies of the Lord, will be forever banished and forever under his judgment. And those who accepted the Lord, who came under his authority, who gave their lives to him and received his grace, will live forever in his presence, forever safe, forever knowing that the promises that are made here were true in the Lord and have been made true. [00:26:06] This is a psalm for the in between times, the time before the final judgment comes. [00:26:15] It's a warning to God's enemies to be wise, right? Therefore, in verse ten, o kings, be wise, be warned. O rulers of the earth, what do you do? Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son lest he be angry, and you perished the way. [00:26:39] It's a warning to his enemies and a hope to a fourth group, his servants. [00:26:48] Those who come, those who belong to the Lord, have been anointed by the Holy Spirit, who belong to the Messiah through faith in him, who are under God's, the kingship, of his redemptive kingdom, to his servants. There's good news here, isn't there? It means that despite the enemies of the Lord plotting and raging and all of that, despite them doing that, they cannot break apart the bonds between us and the Lord any more than they can break apart the bonds between the father and the Son, any more than they can break apart the divine unity that is the trinity. [00:27:37] It's just not going to happen. That's why Paul says, neither height nor depth nor power is to come, nor things visible, nor things invisible, nor anything at all in all creation can separate you from the love of God in Christ, nothing plot away. [00:27:56] We can say to our enemies in the name of the Lord because we have no need to fear. We belong to the Lord Jesus. [00:28:07] So there's a warning to the enemies of the Lord, a call to repentance, a call to faith and hope for all of us who put our faith in him. [00:28:16] As the last line of this psalm says, blessed are all who take refuge in him. [00:28:23] Blessed are all who take refuge in him, those who flee from the counsel of the wicked, the way of the sinners, the seed of the scoffers that we heard about in psalm one, those who flee from the plotting and the planning and the raging of the Lord's enemies and find their protection in the Lord not some other group of people or some other power or some other God, but in the Lord they are, you are blessed, safe. You have refuge, you have protection. [00:29:03] So there's this choice to all of us. We can say, will we be wise? [00:29:10] Will we recognize the reality that psalm two sets before us, or will we live in our delusions? [00:29:18] Right? Will we be small dogs yapping at God, thinking that somehow we will destroy him? [00:29:27] No. [00:29:29] Will we be wise? [00:29:33] Now, before we end and we think about that decision in our own lives, I have to point out something very important, because there's going to be something. There is something that confuses these choosers. I'll call them us, those who are confronted with this choice. Will I be wise or will I live in my delusions? Will I fight against the Lord or will I take refuge in him? [00:30:06] There's something that will confuse many people, and it's actually God himself that creates the confusion, which is surprising, perhaps. [00:30:19] Here's the thing that's confusing. [00:30:22] People will look and hear this psalm, and they will rightly see the power of it. There's a lot of power in this psalm, right? The false power, especially of the Lord's enemies, contrasted with the awesome laughing power of goddess, the power of the sun, who will break them in pieces with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Power, power, right? [00:30:58] And so what a lot of people do is they look for that power, for salvation, which makes a lot of sense. That's how psalm two sets us up. The confusing thing is that God demonstrates that power by crucifying his son. [00:31:18] So there are, a lot of people are looking for this strength. They're looking for glory and crushing power. They're looking for God working in the world in this awesome, obvious way. [00:31:33] But then what God does is he sends his son into the world, who instead of moving into Jerusalem, getting established, you know, displacing Herod, getting on the throne, the apostles become advisors, right? And then he wields the sword and routes the Romans and establishes the glorious kingdom of Israel of God. Instead, he gets crucified. [00:32:07] The son of God gets crucified outside the city, place of the skull. [00:32:20] He gets crucified outside of the city, the death of the son, then the death of his servants, most of his apostles, the death of many who put their faith in him, the constant persecution of the church. [00:32:37] This is confusing. [00:32:39] And as I said before, this is not an accident. The scriptures specifically tell us that God chooses to demonstrate his power in this way, specifically to confuse these raging people. [00:32:55] And other things. [00:32:58] Why does God do it this way? [00:33:01] One is to overthrow human based confidence. [00:33:07] He takes our confidence in our ability to create kingdoms and powers and economies and all these kind of things, and he just totally undermines it by saying, here's how I'm going to establish the kingdom of God. [00:33:21] I'm going to use the death of my son. [00:33:25] I'm going to use the death of the king to establish the kingdom right according to human power. That makes no sense at all. [00:33:38] And that's the point. This is not according to human power. This is one of the reasons God does it this way. He wants to totally undermine and overthrow our confidence in ourselves. [00:33:52] He wants us never to be able to look at Jesus and his kingdom and say, well, if it hadn't been Jesus, it could have been someone else. Probably there were other good people, there were other righteous people, there were other smart politicians and charming people and great warriors. [00:34:10] No, he wants to overthrow and undermine human based confidence so that we might take refuge in the Lord and be blessed in him. A second thing he does is he wants to underline, highlight, put in bold our wickedness and our selfishness. [00:34:33] The Son of God comes into the world. Psalm two says, kiss the Son and be saved, and then we crucify him. [00:34:42] We put him to death. [00:34:45] That's not kissing the son. [00:34:47] That's not obedience to the Son, it's not service to the Son. [00:34:52] The world raged against him even to the point of his death, and God wanted to make sure that that was known. [00:35:02] He also wanted to save us from it. [00:35:06] Jesus on the cross, he takes our wickedness, he takes our selfishness on himself. [00:35:14] He's not just making a point, he's solving a problem by being a sacrifice for sin, by turning away God's wrath from us, by taking sin on himself, he becomes a propitiation. He turns aside God's wrath for us so that we can be saved from ourselves. He stands in our place and is smashed. We could say he stands in our place and is broken to pieces like a potter's vessel, because that's what we deserve, because that's our rebellion. [00:35:57] But he does it because he loves us. He does it so he can save us. He allows himself to be broken under the wrath of Goddesse, a perfect plan, the will of the triune God to save us from ourselves. [00:36:18] And this is what he does on the cross. [00:36:21] He disrupts our pride, he disrupts our murmuring for those who have eyes to see and those who have ears to hear. [00:36:33] To some, the scriptures say the cross of Christ is a stumbling stone. [00:36:40] They hear the power of psalm two. They look at the cross of Christ, and we say, not for me. And so they look to this pharaoh, that king, this power, that plan, and they continue on their way, looking for other people, other plans that will ultimately fail. [00:37:01] But the Lord in causing us to be born again, the Lord in regenerating our hearts and giving us eyes to see and ears to hear, what does he do? [00:37:10] He allows us to see the cross and to confess our sins instead of rejecting it, instead of turning away from it. We see it and we say, if it weren't for him, it would be me. There's refuge in the cross. There's protection in the cross. There's power in the cross because the Lord Jesus, the son of God, eternally begotten. [00:37:37] He satisfies divine justice, he defeats death. [00:37:45] He raises from the dead. And guess where he's seated right now? At the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. [00:37:54] He's set in the heavenly Jerusalem. He has accomplished this thing that is described here in psalm two, and he is our hope. God did not lie. In other words, the glory was revealed in Christ and it will be revealed even further. But it was the glory of and power of redemption. [00:38:21] It was the glory and power of forgiveness. [00:38:26] It was the glory and the power not of humans climbing the ladder of accomplishments and objectives, but the glory of God forgiving us of our sins. [00:38:40] The glory of God standing in our place so that we might have his righteousness. [00:38:46] It's the glory of strength that comes through weakness, blessing that comes through curse, light that comes through darkness and into our dark world. [00:39:00] Nothing that is said in psalm two is untrue. [00:39:05] Everything is true and completely true. [00:39:10] Every single person, kings and servants, rulers and subjects of the world must be wise, must be. Kiss the Son. [00:39:21] There will come a day when he will come in great power and judgment. But praise God, he didn't when he first came into this world. [00:39:32] The beginning of his work, which will end finally in the completion of judgment and in the completion of salvation, began with a final opportunity for us to be saved, for us to be saved from our sins. [00:39:49] The way to not perish in the wickedness of our ways, the way to not perish in our wrath, is to put our faith in Jesus, the son of God, who came into this world to save sinners from their sins. And he did so through his own death and his own resurrection and his ascension, and then finally at his coming again. [00:40:17] So choose Christ and don't be afraid. [00:40:21] Don't be afraid of the things and the powers of this world. Don't give your fears and your hopes over to them, but trust the Son. And when we think about David, think about him in connection to Christ, foreshadowing Christ, preparing the way for Christ. When you think about yourself, see yourself in Christ and know that nothing can separate us between us and the Lord. Nothing can separate us from the love of God toward us in Christ Jesus. Let's pray. [00:40:54] Our heavenly Father, we thank you that we can call you our father. We thank you that we are your sons and sons because we belong to Jesus. [00:41:06] We ask, Lord, that you would put our confidence and our faith in him and that you would break us, break our fleshly natures, destroy the sin that is in us, put to death that which is evil, that we might not be separated from you. [00:41:25] You have already made peace with us, through with you, through the blood of the cross, you have already strengthened us in the work of Christ. Continue to do this work after justification, after adoption. Do that work of sanctification that continues to grow us and perfect us and help us be people who take refuge in you. [00:41:52] Let us be those who constantly, constantly run to you, abide in you, find safety in you, warmth, protection, nourishment, love, training and glory. [00:42:09] Lord, we recognize that the world does continue to rage against the Lord, you against your king, and against your kingdom. [00:42:21] We ask that you would continue to strengthen your saints in the midst of persecution, that you would strengthen the that you would strengthen our will, our zeal to persevere after you, to look to Christ as the author and perfecter of our salvation. [00:42:42] And we ask, Lord, that you would continue to subdue the world to yourself even as you subdued us through the preaching of the gospel. [00:42:52] We thank you for this great and gentle and forbearing and hopeful way that salvation is coming. [00:43:01] We pray for those who do not yet know you, that they might rest in you, find refuge in you, and join us in the praise of you, that one day we might all together worship you. [00:43:17] We thank you, Lord, that you have called us to pray for our enemies, to seek their salvation. Please work in our hearts humility, knowing that we were once not reconciled to you, that we were once separated from you and under your wrath. Let us give and share that same gospel that you have given to us, the gospel that is the power of God unto salvation. [00:43:43] We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. [00:43:47] I.