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[0:00] We're back in 2 Samuel chapter 7. Last time we saw God's word to David, and we'll see now tonight, we'll read of David's response to that word where God promised a throne will be established forever.

[0:20] So we'll start at verse 18 and read through the end of the chapter. Then King David went in and sat before the Lord, and he said, Who am I, O sovereign Lord, and what is my family that you have brought me this far?

[0:39] And as if this were not enough in your sight, O sovereign Lord, you have also spoken about the future of the house of your servant. Is this your usual way of dealing with man, O sovereign Lord?

[0:53] What more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O sovereign Lord. For the sake of your word and according to your will, you have done this great thing and made it known to your servant.

[1:08] How great you are, O sovereign Lord! There is no one like you, and there is no one, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears.

[1:19] And who is like your people Israel, the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself, and to make a name for himself, and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations and their gods from before your people whom you redeemed from Egypt.

[1:39] You have established your people Israel as your very own forever, and you, O Lord, have become their God. And now, Lord God, keep forever the promise you have made concerning your servant and his house.

[1:57] Do as you promised, so that your name will be great forever. Then men will say, The Lord Almighty is God over Israel, and the house of your servant David will be established before you.

[2:13] O Lord Almighty, God of Israel, you have revealed this to your servant, saying, I will build a house for you. So your servant has found courage to offer you this prayer.

[2:26] O sovereign Lord, you are God, your words are trustworthy, and you have promised these good things to your servant. Now be pleased to bless the house of your servant, that it may continue forever in your sight.

[2:40] For you, O sovereign Lord, have spoken, and with your blessing, the house of your servant will be blessed forever. Well, do the mercies and blessings of God humble you with great thankfulness to God?

[2:59] That's a mark of a healthy spiritual condition. When the goodness of God makes us humbly grateful to God. And if not, it could be that we're under the spell of something of a spirit of entitlement, as if God owed us something.

[3:17] But we long ago in Adam, and hundreds of times in our own lifetime, have forfeited every good thing from God. So that means that any good thing that comes to us has the tag of mercy on it.

[3:30] It's a mercy, a kindness to us that we did not deserve. And God's full of such things for his people. New mercies every day.

[3:42] And mercy upon mercy, and grace upon grace. And each one of those mercies is to bind us all the tighter to our God in love for his mercies to us.

[3:58] We're going to see that tonight in David. We're in a series on great chapters of the Bible. And 2 Samuel 7 fits that category. Last time we studied the first 17 verses, in which David received an incredible promise from God.

[4:16] Having been settled as king over all of Israel, David conquered Jerusalem and made it the center of his political life.

[4:27] He had a palace built for him there. But he also made Jerusalem the center of the religious life, for he brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. And so one day as he's in his palace talking with Nathan, he confided in Nathan the prophet that he felt uncomfortable living in a luxurious palace when the Ark of God was still in a tent.

[4:54] And he wanted to correct such a situation by building a house for the Lord. A permanent structure. And Nathan said, do whatever is in your heart. But later that night, the Lord came to Nathan and said, no, David's not the man.

[5:10] It's not him. And it's not yet. And he sent him with a message for David the next day. And in summary, the message from God through Nathan to David, King David, is you're not the one to build me a house.

[5:24] Rather, I will build a house for you. A play on the word meaning a dynasty of kings coming from your own body.

[5:35] Your own family tree will be a tree of kings in Israel. Indeed, the one to succeed you will be the one to build a house for my name.

[5:47] And then here's the amazing thing about the promise. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me. Your throne will be established forever.

[6:00] Now, most dynasties of that time and era lasted a hundred years. And then a new king from a different family would come to the throne along with his sons.

[6:12] And that might last a few generations. A hundred years. But here, David is promised a throne and a kingdom that will last forever. One of his offspring upon the throne forever.

[6:26] Now, that amazing promise is going to take many more weeks for us to study as we're going to see how was that promise fulfilled. Um, there will be twists and turns in that fulfillment that, uh, will almost look like God's promise had failed because Israel would be without a king.

[6:49] But here, um, I want us tonight to focus on the last part of the chapter and then we'll, we'll come back to the fulfillment of the promise in coming weeks.

[6:59] Because the last part of the chapter is David's response to this amazing promise. Uh, Charlie read that for us and it begins there in verse 18 that King David went in and sat before the Lord and then said, um, you remember when the letter from Sennacherib, king of Assyria came to King Hezekiah with his mighty armies coming to destroy Jerusalem and to conquer Judah.

[7:36] You remember what he did? He received the letter from the messengers and read it. And then he went up to the temple of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord.

[7:48] And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord, Lord, look what they're doing and saying about you. You remember how, how he went into the temple of the Lord and there he spoke to him. I must go and have a talk with Jesus.

[8:03] I must tell him about my troubles. He will hear my faintest cry and he will answer by and by. Blessed troubles when they chase us into the presence of the Lord in prayer to tell it to Jesus.

[8:19] Some of you have that little book of Puritan prayers, the Valley of Vision on page 203. There's a prayer called voyage. And in that prayer, we asked the Lord, help me to live with skill to convert every care into prayer.

[8:38] To convert every care into prayer. That's a skill I want to learn more of in this year. That at the very first thought of care and anxiety, I will convert it to prayer.

[8:52] Well, that's what we saw in Hezekiah. He had a concern and immediately he goes into the house of the Lord and spreads it before him. He does it with the bad news.

[9:03] Now, here tonight, David would teach us another skill and it's to convert every blessing into humble thanksgiving. Again, to go before the Lord.

[9:16] Upon hearing from Nathan, the prophet, these amazing promises, he went and sat before the Lord and talked to him. Now, that communion with the Lord makes us winners, whatever the outcome, whatever it is that caused us to come into his presence, whether it was fear and need and problems, or whether it was blessing, as it is here in David's case.

[9:41] And though it's a wonderful privilege to have continual access to God so that we can run to him throughout our day and send up these rifle prayers and he hears them, there's more to prayer than that.

[10:01] Yes, yes, we can pray on the run, but we also need to take time to go in and sit before the Lord. To sit and to talk to him and to pour out our hearts in extended, concentrated communion.

[10:18] David will teach us this if we will spend time in the Psalms with him and pray his prayers along with him, making them our own.

[10:30] God is David's go-to person in loneliness, in fear, in perplexity, in guilt, in weakness, in joy, in blessing, and with thanksgiving.

[10:44] And that's where we see him tonight. And so our first lesson is to let all circumstances take us to God, to share them with him, especially his blessings. That's what we're seeing tonight.

[10:56] We were saved for this. We were saved to be called into fellowship with Jesus Christ. God who called us into fellowship with his son, our Lord Jesus Christ, is faithful.

[11:09] And so convert every blessing into humble thanksgiving in fellowship with him. Matthew Henry points out that though the gracious message from God came through his messenger, Nathan, David's response is not sent back through Nathan to God, but he takes the response directly to the Lord.

[11:31] And so Matthew Henry says, when ministers deliver God's message to us, it's not to them, but to God that our hearts must reply.

[11:43] And I would add, the sooner we reply to him, the better, to strike while the iron is hot, as God seeks communion with us, and so wants to hear from us about the very things that he has just said to us through his preached word.

[12:02] So, we seek to have a closing prayer, which is a response to the word we've heard. We seek to have a closing hymn, which is a hymn of response, a song that responds to what we've just heard.

[12:17] But do we sit before the Lord then? Do you find time to sit before the Lord and have a talk with him about what he just talked to you about? We heard this morning about contentment, didn't we?

[12:32] Are we going to give time to sit and to talk with the Lord about our contentment and about our delight in him and to tell him, confess to him our sins in this area and to plead with him for grace to know more and more of this delight in God that would lead us to a contented walk with him?

[12:55] Well, here's David. He's heard from God and now he comes directly to him in humble thanksgiving. And so the second lesson then is humility magnifies our gratitude.

[13:08] A humble spirit makes us all the more grateful for God's blessing. And humility is just the reflex action to an awareness of who we are and who God is.

[13:22] It's not something we try to do. If you just try to be humble, it will be fake humility. No, rather real humility is just knowing who God is and knowing who I am.

[13:34] And the response of that awareness is that we walk humbly with our God. And that's what we see here in David's heart.

[13:45] It becomes evident as soon as he opens his mouth. Notice his first words. Who am I? Oh, sovereign Lord. There's both his low view of self. Who am I?

[13:56] And the high view of God. Oh, sovereign Lord. Oh, sovereign Lord is mentioned seven times in his response. It's a compound of two names of God.

[14:07] His covenant name, Yahweh. The great I am. Together with another word that means Lord and master. A king, a sovereign.

[14:19] Oh, sovereign Lord. He uses it seven times. They're not vain repetitions. It's rather his awe and reverence and amazement that this great I am is my Lord, my master.

[14:35] And he calls upon him as such. The Lord and master of the universe. In verse 22, you see his view of God. How great you are, oh, sovereign Lord.

[14:47] There's no one like you and there's no God but you. So God is properly known and exalted above everything else that exists.

[14:57] How great you are. Did you wonder where that song came from? How great thou art? The song singer of Israel said it first.

[15:09] How great you are. And no one who can truly sing to God how great thou art will be found singing how great I art.

[15:20] To borrow a line from our brother Lucent. No, when we see God as great, then we'll see ourselves as small. And humbly come before him with our thanksgiving.

[15:36] So David says, When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars which you set in place, what is man? That you're mindful of him. That you even think of him. That you even cast a thought his way.

[15:48] Let alone that you would visit him and care for him. Who am I? Is the response to this sovereign Lord who reigns over all.

[16:02] You know, without the grace of God, knowledge puffs up, the Bible says. Money puffs up. Honor puffs up. Let a man receive some advancement and honor in this world and it goes to their head.

[16:18] Look at me. Look who I am. Aren't I important? But notice by grace, David does not reply that way. He's not only not puffed up by the honor.

[16:29] He's actually humbled by it. It's not look at me, but who am I? Who am I to be so honored? Well, in one case we could say, who are you, David?

[16:43] Well, you're a great man. You're a mighty warrior. You're a champion in Israel. He had many great victories over Israel's enemies that he had won.

[16:54] And though others sang his praises, not him. He knows himself too well for that. He knows his God too well for that. And his view of self.

[17:07] He knows his inward sins that nobody else sees. He knows his inward thoughts. He knows his weakness, his failures. He knows what he deserves. And so rather than being puffed up by the honor, he's humbled by the honor God has placed upon him.

[17:24] Now, when God had sent the promise through Nathan back in verses 8 and 9, he had talked about how low David was before he blessed him.

[17:35] You were just a lowly shepherd boy caring for your father's sheep. And for all of that, he could have spent his whole life in utter obscurity had not God exalted him from following the sheep to leading his people Israel.

[17:50] He owed all of that to God's sovereign will in prospering him and advancing him. Not to anything that was in himself. Who am I that I should be king of Israel?

[18:02] And he knew that all of his survival and successes and battles, verse 9, were all due to God being with him wherever he went. And it was God who cut off his enemies before him.

[18:17] And so what God said, David agrees with. Who am I that I should be king? And what is my family? He says. Who am I and what is my family? Well, he was of the tribe of Judah.

[18:28] That was the tribe of kings. The royal line in Israel. But they were nothing special. They were just sheep herders. Who am I and what is my family that you have brought me thus far?

[18:45] Notice how he starts with God's blessings to him in the past. That you've brought me this far. I'm only here as king because of you, Lord. Sovereign Lord.

[18:56] And you're kindly stooping down to take hold of me and lift me up. And I'm still not over that grace to me that you've shown me. And as if this were not enough, Lord, you've also spoken about the future of the house of your servant promising this dynasty of kings from my house and that forever.

[19:16] Is this your usual way of dealing with man, O sovereign Lord? No, this isn't his usual way of dealing with man. This is his distinguishing David out of the whole lot.

[19:31] This is his rare blessing indeed. His special distinguishing love and favor for David. And David says, I don't know what to say. Verse 20. He's astonished.

[19:42] He's dumbfounded. He's out of words. What more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O sovereign Lord. So for the sake of your word and according to your will, you have done this great thing and made it known to your servant.

[19:58] It's not because of who I am. It's because of your will and the desire to magnify your name and your word. Why should I be the one brought into this amazing plan of your will and your word?

[20:11] Who am I? Can you see how his humility magnifies his gratitude? His thanksgiving. You say, oh, but John, I've not been made a king and I've not received any promise about having a dynasty after me.

[20:30] I think David would say, think again. You're going to reign with Christ one day. If you belong to this king of whom David was promised, the son of David, Jesus Christ, you're going to reign with him someday on his throne, just as he was obedient to his father and reigned upon his throne.

[20:55] We have the same great God David did, don't we? And like David, this God has done amazing things for us in the past. Did he not choose you before the creation of the world that you would be holy and saved his people?

[21:11] Is that his usual way of dealing with men? Is that the status of most men in the world today? They've been chosen unto eternal life and they're the children of God.

[21:23] No, that's not his usual way. You are a part of a remnant. This is distinguishing love. He's marked you out as part of his precious bride, his chosen people, his holy nation, his royal priesthood, his peculiar people, a people of his own, a treasured possession, the apple of his eye, the wheat among the chaff.

[21:48] That's what you are and you're that because God has chosen you as such. And all when we were just as deserving of everlasting torments as the damned in hell.

[22:03] But God, but God. Did the Father promise to give us to his son as a bride if he would come and die for us? Why?

[22:17] Why should we gain from his reward? That we would be a reward given to his son for his suffering. He gets us and we get him.

[22:28] Who got the better part of that deal? Who am I that a king should bleed and die for? Who am I that he should pray not my will but thine for?

[22:41] The answer, I may never know why he ever loved me so that to an old rugged cross he'd go for who am I? Who am I? Who am I that he should become man for me become sin for me become a curse for me that I should have all my sins forgiven and remembered no more?

[23:02] Who am I that I should be predestined in love to be adopted as one of his sons? That I should be inseparably united to Christ and counted righteous in his righteousness.

[23:14] Who am I to be called the friend of God to have access to the throne of God at any time? To have Christ ever living and interceding for me there on that throne and to know that he treasures fellowship with me delights to hear my prayers weak as though they are and to have God the Holy Spirit take up his residence in me to help me in a hundred different ways.

[23:39] Who am I? And as if this were not enough the sovereign Lord has spoken about our future hasn't he? and that future is there is now therefore no condemnation not now and never not in the final day of judgment and there's nothing that will be able to separate us from his love and he will never leave us or forsake us and he'll never let me be snatched from his hands and be lost.

[24:09] Nothing will ever happen to me except that he will overrule and work it for my benefit for his glory and that my present troubles are not worth comparing to what?

[24:20] To the glory that will be revealed in us and that glory of a nearer and dearer relationship with Christ face to face with Christ my Savior that's what's coming savoring his love for me beholding his glory and God wiping away every tear from our eyes swallowing up death forever removing every vestige of sin every bit of the curse and giving us to live forever in a world made new the home of righteousness that the joys of heaven are such that they never perish spoil or fade they will never get old they'll never wear out ever full of new surprise I've seen more and more of glory in God's love to us in Christ forever and ever without end there's enough reason for us to say with David who am I oh sovereign Lord to have been given such mercies from your hand and then David's humility is is seen further in the way he refers to himself we saw his favorite description for God in this prayer is oh sovereign Lord what is his favorite description of himself it's your servant isn't it your servant oh sovereign Lord ten times in this prayer

[25:49] David refers to himself as your servant that's how he thinks of himself how do you think of yourself David's identity is I'm your servant oh sovereign Lord that's a humble position isn't it what does that teach us about David he may be king but as such he sees himself as a servant of the most high king that there is a higher throne than his there is a king of kings there is a lord of lords and that's his God oh sovereign Lord and I am your servant so a king who is a servant and what do servants do they do the will of their master their higher king and his word trumps all my plans so David was planning to build a house for the Lord and the Lord says no oh well then we scrap that plan don't we because we live we exist to do the will of the master doesn't it remind you of the virgin Mary that we studied a couple weeks ago where she's given another amazing promise unbelievable promise that as a virgin she's going to give birth to the the son of the most high and her response

[27:10] I'm the Lord's servant may it be to me as you have said she knew who she was and it affected the way she responded to his word and she willingly lays herself out in submission to his plan for her life and so the honor upon Mary rather than puffing her up humbles her and you read her her song of praise she's humbled that God would ever show such kindness to one so poor and needy as she and so David king over all of Israel but only king as God's servant to bring blessing to those who are under his reign and to bring glory to God and as long as David kept that in mind he did fine as a king he was a blessing to the people who he served and he was an honor to God his king so he's king to bring God's blessings to those he serves he was to bring blessing to Bathsheba he was to bring blessing to Uriah one of his faithful soldiers and I say as long as he saw himself as the servant of the most high sovereign lord he did fine and there's a principle there that we all need to remember you may be given a position of authority but what is that given to you for yes I am a pastor and I'm over you and the Lord to watch over you but only as God's servant to do you good husbands you're over your wives in the Lord but only as God's servant on his errand to do your wife good to bless her to benefit her parents you are over your children but only as God's servants to do them good for God's sake and so David king over a nation recognizes that he has and holds that position as God's servant humble are the people under your in your relationships being blessed because of you that's the spirit that David enters into his kingship and sees himself as the servant of the Lord of course there was one king who was also the servant of the Lord who did this perfectly our Lord Jesus the one of whom is here promised to David and yes he's king but he's also the servant of his father and so he submits to his father's will and he he suffers for his people he dies for his people he gives his life for his people to bring blessing to them and glory to God it's striking how much of David's response is taken up with this exalted view of God whom he praises he can't get over the fact that this great God the sovereign

[30:15] Lord would show such mercies to him and so having spoken of God's greatness he then speaks of the greatness of Israel but notice how any greatness of Israel is all because of what their great God had done for them he says there's no one like you and then in verse 23 and who is like your people Israel the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself and to make a name for himself and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations and their gods from before your people whom you redeemed from Egypt you have established your people Israel as your very own forever and you oh Lord have become their God so Israel is great she's the greatest nation of the world but why it's a derived greatness isn't it it's derived from the fact that they have this great God and it's him who makes them great redeeming them driving out nations before them working awesome wonders on their behalf making Israel taking them to himself forever all that we have accomplished you have done for us

[31:23] Isaiah 26 12 and 1st Corinthians 4 7 as the people of God we can say what do we have that we've not received what privileges what blessings do we have that didn't come to empty hands undeserving though we were and that's what makes us humbly thankful for the privilege the honor of being in covenant with God through the blood of Jesus Christ have you noticed that humble people are thankful people humble people are thankful people but things are never quite right and good enough for the arrogant who always think they deserve more than what they're given so complaining and discontent as we heard this morning mark their lies but for the humble person who knows he deserves nothing good blessings are met with profound gratitude gratitude some of you like to say when I ask you how are you you say well I'm much better than I deserve that's the reality we all live in and that's why we're we should ever be overflowing with thanksgiving humility magnifies gratitude so what's your response to God's blessings in your life this past year as you look to the past what has God done for you oh you would have to say wouldn't you that this is not his normal way with men just the fact that you were born in this country that is not his normal way with men millions billions of people are born and live and die without ever hearing the gospel of Jesus

[33:11] Christ and so we can look back upon the year and we see some blessings and even back beyond and we say who am I that you should give such kind blessings to me and then we look to the future has God said anything about our futures that would make us say oh and who am I as if that wasn't enough Lord look what you said about my future and poured out our gratitude to him for it well that's David's response and the last part of his response from verses 25 to the end is a prayer to God to keep his promise so it's the first part of the psalm is God making the promise David's humble gratitude for it and then praying God you said this now keep your word you ever had somebody tell you you should never pray for that which God promises you used to be something I would hear from time to time it's wrong to pray for something if God promised it if he promised it you don't need to ask for it

[34:19] I mean it shows your unbelief just claim it and get on with it that might that might seem good to human logic but it isn't divine logic notice what David says God has just promised to do all these things for him verse 25 now Lord God keep forever the promise you've made he's praying that God would keep his word keep the promise you've made concerning your servant and his house do as you promised so that your name will be great forever and so on he goes again toward the end of it be pleased to bless the house of your servant that it may continue forever in your sight for you oh sovereign Lord has spoken and with your blessing the house of your servant will be blessed forever so we're meant to pray the promises we are meant to pray for that which God has promised us and that's not unique to David we're going to need to deal with

[35:20] Psalm 89 because there Ethan is praying and he's pleading the very same covenant promises that are found in 2 Samuel 7 pleading them to God for this king that was promised to them but they don't see a king they're under the heel of Babylon there is no king of Israel and so we'll see Ethan and the whole church therefore of the old covenant pleading with God to remember his promise to David and it's not just something in the Old Testament our Lord taught us to do the same in the Lord's prayer I don't know if you've thought of it before but he's promised to glorify his name hasn't he and so we pray hallowed be your name and he's promised to that his kingdom is coming and so we pray your kingdom come and he's promised that his will will one day be done on earth as it is in heaven and so we pray may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven and he's prayed to meet our every need and so we pray for our daily bread and in the new covenant he's promised to forgive us all of our sins and to remember them no more and so we pray forgive us our sins and he's promised to deliver us from the evil ones so we pray deliver us from evil

[36:43] God loves to hear his own words brought before him as we pray and plead his promises Spurgeon referred to God's promises as God's checkbook and he says the checks are already written they're already made out but you need to sign them and bring them to the bank and ask them to be cashed and that's what we do in prayer we're bringing the promises to God saying God you said this now do what you've promised and he's pleased to hear his words brought before him in prayer God your words are trustworthy you've promised to build a house for me David says now do what you have said that your name would be great forever so let's enter this new year standing on the promises of God let's notice the promises of God in our scripture reading we sang a whole bunch of them tonight

[37:46] Psalm 23 he will hold me fast Psalm 139 says Jesus said that if I'm weak I could come to him all kinds of promises promises and so as you're reading the Bible let's be looking for the promises of God and let's not leave off reading until we have brought those promises before God in prayer and say God you have said now help me you said you would be the strength of the weak I'm weak would you help me today God you said that you were faithful and just to forgive us our sins and I've sinned and I need forgiveness would you forgive me and keep your promise to me we bring him his own word and then let's hold on to the promise we're going to see that this promise of a king on David's throne didn't just happen right away this is a thousand years before Christ's birth and the dynasty lasts for four hundred years and it comes to an end and there are six hundred years of no king in

[38:58] Israel and the promise of God seems to have failed and there are things in your life that may make it look like the promise is not true it's not happening it's not coming true and so I say let's hold on to the promise let's not let go of it men forget their promises but God never and then let's remember he is God and his words are trustworthy go on pleading his promise waiting on the Lord with expectancy and let's find in the promise itself courage to go on asking that's what David says because you promised I have found courage to ask this of you so we're on praying ground brothers and sisters if there's a promise and we find courage to come with confidence with a promise in our hands let's be sure we're fulfilling any conditions that are attached to the promise if there are such let's be sure all of our expectation of blessing is upon him and then to be sure to glorify God for his faithfulness when he answers our prayers and he fulfills the promise you know God

[40:08] God was fulfilling promises in our lives all last year wasn't he how many did you recognize and come back and sit before the Lord and thank him well probably not as many as if you would have been pleading the promise if you got sat down and were pleading those promises when they happen you would see them and you'd notice them so let's be pleading them and then when they happen let's go back and sit before the Lord with a song of thanksgiving and praise to him well David's greater son was born of whom the angel Gabriel said to Mary the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever his kingdom will never end he's reigning today and he will reign forever he ascended to heaven he reigns now in the midst of his enemies and he will return to this earth and all of his enemies will be put under his feet and forever and ever he and his people will reign maybe this is the year we'll see the king in his glory let's keep our eyes looking to him studying first

[41:24] Thessalonians this week with a brother we notice that the end of each chapter five chapters in first Thessalonians and every one of those chapters ends with an eye on the return of Christ let's live today let's let's remember there's been a promise hasn't there about something about the king coming back and let's live with that promise on our lips even so come Lord Jesus we're going to stand and sing standing on the promises of God standing on the go ahead and stand standing on the promises of Christ my king that's the king that was promised here promises that cannot fail let's sing to his praise we thank you father that your word is trustworthy as for God his way is perfect and the word of the Lord is flawless we thank you for the promises we've heard today thank you for the promise this morning that we can do all things in Christ who gives us strength that's not what the devil's telling us that's not what our flesh is telling us it's not what the world is telling us but it is what you have promised us and so help us to hold to that promise you you said that we can be content in every circumstance that's what gives us peace and joy and it's what gives you glory and honor in this world we would say with

[42:51]  David who am I that I should know the secret that I should know Christ that he is the fullness of the deity and in bodily form and we are complete in him we are satisfied in him that we should know that secret in a world of woe people are addicted to uppers and downers because of fear and sadness and depression because they do not know what's coming next we thank you that you have blessed us to be joined to Christ and to know the peace and joy that comes from believing so fill our hearts with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit that this year would find us overflowing with hope by the power of the Spirit we look to you with confidence in Jesus name amen we're dismissed you you you you you you