Those Remaining Corruptions In Your Heart

[0:00] 1 Samuel 8 is where we're going to be at. God tells us in 1 Timothy 3 that all scripture is spirit-breathed. In Hebrew 4, God tells us that his word is living, powerful, and piercing.

[0:13] I'll read aloud as you follow along. When I'm finished reading, I'll say the word of God for the people of God. If you receive God's word by faith this way, then please respond by saying thanks be to God. When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges over Israel.

[0:30] His firstborn son was named Joel. The second was Abijah. They were judges in Beersheba. However, his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned towards dishonest prophet, took bribes, and perverted justice.

[0:45] So all the elders of Israel gathered together and went to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, Look, you are old. Your sons do not walk in your ways. Therefore, appoint a king to judge us, the same as all the other nations have.

[0:57] When they said, Give us a king to judge us, Samuel considered a demand to be wrong. So he prayed to the Lord. But the Lord told him, Listen to the people and everything they say to you.

[1:10] They have not rejected you. They have rejected me as their king. They are doing the same thing to you that they have done to me since the day I brought them out of Egypt until this day, abandoning me and worshiping other gods.

[1:24] Listen to them, but solemnly warn them and tell them about the customary rights of the king who will reign over them. Samuel told all the Lord's words to the people who were asking him for a king.

[1:36] He said, These are the rights of the king who will reign over you. He will take your sons and put them to his use in his chariots, on his horses, or running in front of his chariots.

[1:47] He can appoint them for his use as commanders of thousands or commanders of fifties, to plow his ground and reap his harvest, or to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He can take your daughters to become perfumers, cooks, and bakers.

[2:02] He can take your best fields, vineyards, and olive orchards, and give them to his servants. He can take a tenth of your grain of your vineyards and give them to his officials and servants.

[2:14] He can take your male servants, your female servants, your best cattle, your donkeys, and use them for his work. He can take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves can become his servants.

[2:25] When that day comes, you will cry out because of the king you've chosen for yourselves. But the Lord won't answer you on that day. The people refused to listen to Samuel.

[2:36] No, they said, We must have a king over us. Then we'll be like all the other nations. Our king will judge us, go out before us, and fight our battles. Samuel listened to all the people's words and then repeated them to the Lord.

[2:50] Listen to them, the Lord told Samuel. Appoint a king for them. Then Samuel told the men of Israel, Each of you, go back to your city. The word of God for the people of God.

[3:04] Isaiah 40 says that the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord stands forever. In Luke 1, no word from God shall be void of power. Let's pray.

[3:16] Amen. Lord, we pray that your word will go forth.

[3:29] We pray that your Holy Spirit will give us hearts and ears to receive you. The living word of God, the King of kings, the Lord of lords.

[3:41] That we will not refuse your rule over our lives. Amen. Well, there's said a group of Christians in a circle, their Bibles open.

[3:54] And as God's word does in the book of James, you know, it becomes a mirror. We see in the word of God another story, another example, or a passage, and it reflects back on us. We start reading, thinking that this is about Israel, or even about, you know, the villains or the enemies pushing in.

[4:11] And before we know it, we realize the Bible is speaking about me, my own heart. And one of those moments in a Bible study, the person who most likely had been a Christian the longest, a godly lady, made the statement that my heart is still so full of sin every single day.

[4:33] And that's what the scripture reveals. So then every other Christian sitting around this circle has that feeling, if this godly woman who's walked with the Lord so long still is so aware of all the sin in her heart, where does that leave the rest of us?

[4:49] And I'm so glad she had the humility to say that. That's the same insight that Pastor Robert Murray Machine in the 1800s in Scotland, he had that same insight.

[5:01] He said, the seed of every sin known to man is in my heart. Do you feel that way as a Christian often as well? So beloved brothers and sisters, beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, that's what I need to talk with you about today.

[5:20] It's those remaining corruptions in your heart and in mine. Those remaining corruptions in the hearts of God's children.

[5:34] I see in this passage three cautions for us in one gospel hope. Here's the first caution. Hearts with remaining corruptions are prone, they're bent to take gifts and turn them into idols.

[5:52] Hearts with remaining corruptions are prone to turn gifts into idols. Would you look at verse one with me? Children are a good gift.

[6:12] Amen? Psalm 127.3 says, Children are a heritage from the Lord. What a blessing. And judges are a good gift.

[6:25] Proverbs 21.15 says, When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous. But Israel was not Samuel's nation.

[6:39] Israel was God's nation. And who is it that can put an authority over his own people? Only God, whose people they are. Samuel was forcing a dynasty.

[6:54] Children, a dynasty is when one king or person in a power wants to make their own children be their successors. Nepotism. God will rule his own people the way that he alone chooses.

[7:10] We have this insight next in verse two, which I think is very significant. I know it is. It's in God's word. Would you look at verse two? The name of the firstborn was Joel.

[7:22] The name of his second was Abijah. And they were judges in Beersheba. Okay, so now we got to do a little research to find out in the Hebrew, what do these two names mean?

[7:32] And where is Beersheba? Well, let's start with the names first. When these two sons are born, Samuel, a man of God, blessed them with wonderful names.

[7:43] Joel, you hear the last two letters is L. We know L means God. So Joel means Yahweh is God. Abijah means my father is Yahweh.

[7:58] Most likely these give us an autobiographical insight into Samuel. Remember, he grew up away from his biological father. He had to call Eli the priest his father. Eli called him his son.

[8:09] And he's growing up in the house of the Lord around the tabernacle at Shiloh. And this is what he wants for his own children more than anything else, that Yahweh would be their God and that their father would be Yahweh himself.

[8:23] This is his prayer for his sons. But the problem with Samuel's sons was not their names, but that their lives did not match up to these wonderful names.

[8:35] Most likely with the best of intentions, we could say Samuel was dressing up his sons with a name. It's something put on them, not something that they had to earn. We read in verse 3, Samuel's sons did not walk in his ways.

[8:50] What do you mean by that? Well, they turned aside after dishonest gain. They took bribes and they perverted justice. You see, their lives did not match their names.

[9:04] Yahweh was obviously not their God. Yahweh, the Lord of hosts, was obviously not their father. Maybe this is why Samuel makes them judges way down in Beersheba.

[9:19] This is a southernmost isolated part of the country. When we can't dress up those things that we've made into an idol enough, the remaining sin in our hearts tries next to cover them up.

[9:33] Maybe Samuel sent them to judge way down in Beersheba, south out of the way, to try to hide them with obscurity and minimize the damage of their corruption. So do you see even from these first three verses how even Samuel, this great prophet of the Lord, this judge that the Lord appointed, the Lord didn't let a word of Samuel fall to the ground.

[9:56] He established him. Even Samuel had remaining corruptions in his heart. Do you agree? You see these? We need to beware of the hurtful result of idols.

[10:13] in our own hearts. When we turn a gift into something that we are elevated beyond its proper place in creation. Look at the results in this case. Lost the trust of God's people.

[10:27] He undermined his own authority as their judge. And he stirred up the remaining corruptions in the hearts of others. He became the occasion for the nation of Israel to rebel ultimately against God.

[10:40] Beware the hurtful results of our own idols. In 1 John 1, 8, we read that if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.

[10:53] You and I still have sin remaining in our hearts also, just like Samuel, don't we? Romans 7, 19, even the Apostle Paul cries this out.

[11:04] Oh, wretched man that I am, the good that I will to do, I do not do, but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. In 1 Timothy 6, 9, God's people are warned that the lusts that remain in our flesh make us fall into many temptations and ensnare even Christians.

[11:24] We know that sanctification, to be made more like Christ, we know that that's God's power, right? In other words, you ask Samuel or Paul or Timothy, who is it?

[11:38] Whose power and energy made you more like Christ now than you were 20 years ago? Every Christian will always say, it was God's power working in me. God gets all the glory for my sanctification, right?

[11:49] But then the question remains, well, why does God allow men like Samuel and Paul and you and me to fall back into our sin? It's all His power to sanctify me. Why is He doing this now to let me, let go just enough for me to drop down and reveal these corruptions in my heart?

[12:06] What are God's purposes in doing this? This is a great question. It's one that every Christian needs to wrestle with and which is, we're not the first Christians to ask this question.

[12:17] I love this answer from the Confession of Faith, chapter 5, paragraph 5. And this chapter is on the providence of God, His sovereignty over every little detail of your life and mine.

[12:30] Listen to this. The most wise, righteous, and gracious God does oftentimes leave for a season His own children to manifold temptations and the corruptions of their own hearts.

[12:46] And here are seven purposes identified. Number one, why? To chastise them for their former sins. Number two, to discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness in their hearts.

[13:01] Number three, that they may be humbled. Number four, to make them more watchful against all future occasions for sin. Number five, for other just and holy ends, so that whatsoever befalls any of God's elect is by His appointment.

[13:18] Reason six, for His glory. And reason seven, for our good. So hearts with remaining corruptions like yours and ours, we need to beware.

[13:30] They will be prone always until that final breath to turn gifts into idols. Here's the second caution from this passage.

[13:42] Hearts with remaining corruptions are prone to disguise idolatry with reason. Hearts with remaining corruptions are prone to disguise idolatry with reason.

[13:57] Well, in the first three verses, the hidden corruptions in the heart of godly Samuel have been discovered. Next, Israel's idols will surface. Look at verse four.

[14:07] Then, in other words, when the sin of Samuel's sons had become so obvious to enough people, we read in verse four that all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah.

[14:24] Here are the 12 tribes represented by elders. It's basically a tribal confederacy. And that's how bad things got. They're looking at the succession plan. Samuel is getting old and his sons are not ones we as a confederation of tribes want to have to submit to anymore.

[14:41] These guys are awful. In verse five, they said to Samuel, look, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Notice how street smart people always wait for the best time to get what they want.

[14:58] The time is right now. Strike while the metal is hot. What we find out is that their hearts had already rejected God as their king. So now they're just waiting for this man of God to show weakness and they can pounce.

[15:14] In verse five, they say, now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. Every time they request for Samuel to make a king for them, it's attached to that desire to be like all the other nations.

[15:31] But notice how this, this is their heart, rejected God, want to be like all the other nations. There's the idol. Notice how they try to disguise it in a reasonable way. It is reasonable because number one, Samuel was old.

[15:44] No one could deny that. And a leadership vacuum would jeopardize the stability of the whole nation. So using our own reason, a king would offer them a strong and stable and predictable center of political authority.

[16:02] That would make sense for these tribes. And this seems more rational than having to show all the other neighbors we don't even have a king. Our king is in heaven and he's unseen.

[16:14] No one's going to believe that. And what's going to keep them from invading and taking our land and making us slaves? Israel appeared to their neighbors as politically chaotic, primitive, and frankly, it would have been embarrassing to have to tell people this is our nation.

[16:32] This is what we do. It's not the first time that this desire came up for God's people. In the book right before this one, chronologically, it's Judges. In Judges chapter 8, verse 23, see Gideon, that great man, the judge that the Lord used to deliver them from the Philistines.

[16:51] They wanted to make his son a king and make him a king. And he says, I will not rule over you and my son will not rule over you. The Lord will rule over you. Gideon pushed off this desire to be like all the other nations before.

[17:05] What's happened again now? Another generation rises up. How quickly they forget. And they stopped singing, so to speak, as we did, under the shadow of your throne, God, your saints have dwelt secure.

[17:20] We run this same risk. If we forget that the Lord of hosts, our God, He was our help in ages past, and then we will lose the hope that He will be our help in years to come.

[17:34] And so Samuel, in verse 6, gets offended. He thinks this is wrong. And for all of his shortcomings, now this should encourage you and me, for all of Samuel's shortcomings, as a father and as a leader, he did the right thing next.

[17:49] Look what Samuel does next in verse 6. Samuel prayed to the Lord. In verse 7, the Lord said, they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

[18:07] Here's why this can encourage you and me. Parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, you who have had the opportunity to witness and share the gospel with someone, or even to disciple someone and lead them, only to find out years later they reject this path, this narrow way that you're trying to walk on.

[18:30] The Lord stands by you like He stood by Samuel. And the Lord says, look, if they were to believe and follow, that would not have been your doing, Samuel, you're my instrument.

[18:42] Because they've turned away, they've not rejected you, they've rejected me. And so what we do is we feel the burden like Samuel, we take it to the Lord in prayer, and we know that this is the Lord's work.

[18:56] The only thing we can do is pray, and we trust it to Him. The Lord stands beside you. The Lord reminds you in verse 7, they have not rejected you, they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

[19:14] That's what idolatry means. It's to reject God's rule over your life and mine. And we're just like the Israelites. We try to rationalize it.

[19:28] We can't outsmart God. He calls it out. He says, you have rejected me. He says to them in verse 8, this is just as idolatrous as the first generation coming out of slavery in Egypt and worshiping the golden calf.

[19:43] In verse 8, He says, just like all the evil deeds you did after I brought them out of Egypt, see, we can't explain it away. He says to you and me and to them, this is your Baal, this is your Astaroth, this is your Dagon, it's your golden calf.

[19:59] You have forsaken me in order to serve a false God. I'm the one who brought you out of slavery. I'm not like any other gods.

[20:11] I'm holy. But because our hearts have remaining corruptions in them, we're prone to turn good gifts into idols and then try to disguise those idols with reason.

[20:26] We're reminded in 1 Corinthians 7, 23, church, Christian. Just like this people of old, you too were bought with a price. The blood of Jesus Christ Himself.

[20:39] And so never become a bondservant to any creature. You belong to Him. He purchased you. He ransomed you. You're His. I bought you, the Lord says.

[20:53] And for us as a congregation, as a church, it's the same caution. We can turn so many things into an idol and then dress them up with our own reason. What He's asking the people of Israel is this.

[21:07] Why do you want to be like all the other nations? Why do you want to be a worldly kingdom when you alone have been set apart to be my heavenly kingdom on earth?

[21:19] I set you apart to be holy as I am holy. Why would you want anything less than that? Well, the third caution is this.

[21:33] That hearts with remaining corruptions are prone even to refuse God's fatherly warnings. This is how stubborn we are.

[21:45] This is how deceitful and powerful those corruptions that remain in our hearts are. Hearts with remaining corruptions are prone to refuse God's fatherly warnings.

[21:56] Look at verse 9. After Samuel prays and the Lord hears, now therefore heed their voice. God says, I'm going to do what they want.

[22:09] However, before that comes, you shall solemnly forewarn them and show them the behavior of the king who will rule over them.

[22:21] The Lord God in his fatherly love and wisdom, I know they will sin, but I will solemnly forewarn them first.

[22:33] There are four cautions that Samuel gives them that describe bondage to a king, even one from their own nation. And they're all marked out by these words, he will take.

[22:46] First, he will take your sons, verse 11. Verse 13, he will take your daughters. Verse 14, he will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves. And fourth, verse 17, he will take a tenth of your sheep.

[23:02] But notice the bent of their hearts, they're prone to refuse this fatherly warning. We read in 19, nevertheless, the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel who spoke for God.

[23:15] And they said, no, we will have a king over us, verse 20, that we may be like all the other nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.

[23:27] Notice the possessive there. The possessive determinative, who is all this for? They say, go before us, fight our battles. In verse 11, Samuel had used the possessive to point to the king.

[23:42] The king's going to make it all about his agenda. Look at verse 11. He'll make your sons be his infantry. Verse 12, he'll make them plow his ground and reap his harvest and make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.

[23:57] Verse 16, he will put them to his work. See, if you get a king and you want to be like all the other nations, you're going to have a repeat of slavery in Egypt.

[24:09] The king of Israel is described using the language of bondage in Egypt. He's a pharaoh figure. In verse 17, it says it, you will be his slaves.

[24:22] Verse 18, you will cry out in the day. Now Samuel changes it to show them you'll be enslaved again. He says in verse 18, because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves and the Lord will not hear you on that day.

[24:45] When we choose the idol, we choose that thing we will serve above God or love more than God and his kingdom. We have no one else to blame, do we? And when God warns us, fatherly, loving warnings, we still rebel against him and refuse him.

[25:03] There's no one else to blame. We become enslaved to the thing we chose instead of God.

[25:15] In verse 19, nevertheless, the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And there it is again, we will have a king over us linked with that we may be like all the other nations.

[25:30] See, they own it. Verse 20, that our king may judge us and go out before us to fight our battles. This is what we are choosing. Think about how the Lord Jesus turns us upside down in the pattern of his true kingdom that men in the flesh refuse to see.

[25:51] And his disciples expected this type of king just like Israel has expected all along. And Jesus says, disciples, when you pray, pray like this. our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name.

[26:05] Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It teaches them utter dependence. Well, that Lord's prayer is corrupted.

[26:17] We could paraphrase what we just read and the attitude of his people here with their remaining sin. It's like they're praying, oh, Samuel, our old father who art on earth, disgraced is your name.

[26:30] May our kingdom come. May our will be done on earth as if there were no heaven. Your sons have sinned against us, so don't have us ask God to forgive us our sins against him.

[26:44] Give us this day what all the other nations had and lead us not anymore at all. We'll deliver ourselves from evil. We want a king. We can see. Footnote.

[26:57] If possible, please make him noble, tall, and handsome. And he'll lead us to fight our own battles for ours is the kingdom. Ours is the power.

[27:08] Ours is the glory forever. Amen. The loving Father in heaven needed his people to discover for themselves the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness that's still in their hearts.

[27:25] what they're saying is, Lord, we don't want you going before us into battle anymore. They're asking for this in a time of peace when all the Philistines have already been pushed back by the mighty hand of God.

[27:43] They're rejecting God's way of fighting. Remember how God fought right before this? Samuel started to pray. He put a whole lamb there and burnt it as a sin offering.

[27:55] And they said, please don't stop praying. And as the smoke is going up as a pleasing aroma to the Lord, the Philistines are coming in battle array against them. And the Lord sends thunder like lightning as if it were an artillery of arrows upon the Philistines and pushes back all the land that they had ever taken.

[28:15] That's what they're rejecting. They don't want to go to war God's way anymore. They want to be like the world, like the defeated Philistines instead.

[28:26] They want to map out their own plans. They want to do the work themselves. They want to try to expand this kingdom on earth by fighting their own battles with a champion out in front of them.

[28:38] A charismatic, strong king from among them just like all the other nations. Church, we need to reflect on this as well.

[28:49] what type of kingdom are we here for? Sadly, some of you have experienced this same temptation gripping an entire church.

[29:00] What we need to do, they'll say, is hire consultants. We need to get people in with charismatic personalities. We need a five-year business plan. We need to use sales tactics.

[29:12] We need to think of some more gimmicks. We need to seem more respectable to the world. We don't want the lightning and the thunder that only God can bring.

[29:26] With God's help, may that always be our prayer as a church. Lord, we don't want anything of this world. We want you, your presence with your people fighting on our behalf. What we do is we pray.

[29:38] We want the lightning of the Spirit of God in the souls of men. We want the thunder of God's voice through broken vessels, earthen vessels.

[29:51] In our weakness, He has made great. But our hearts with remaining corruptions are prone to refuse God's fatherly warnings. Well, there are the three cautions.

[30:05] I know this is heavy. It's soul-searching for me as well. Here's our one gospel hope. God uses the remaining corruptions in His children's hearts for His purposes.

[30:21] God uses those remaining corruptions in your hearts and mine for His own purposes. What a great hope we have. Would you look at verse 21? Samuel heard all the words of the people.

[30:36] Picture how painful that would have been for him to sit there. accused by Satan the whole time, I'm sure. This is all your fault. You loser. You sinner.

[30:47] Look what you've done. You've ruined all the good work God did. Sitting there, hearing all the words of these representatives of the whole nation. And then Samuel does what he does.

[30:58] He goes back to the Lord in prayer. And he repeats it all in the hearing of the Lord. In verse 22, the Lord said to Samuel, heed their voice and make them a king.

[31:17] C.S. Lewis said, there are only two kinds of people in the end. Those who say to God, thy will be done and those to whom God says in the end, thy will be done.

[31:31] all that are in hell, choose it. Someone pointed out the most severe fatherly discipline at times may be God giving us exactly what we ask for.

[31:52] Israel's elders had a God-created desire. desire. We want a king who is a man like us. But what God would reveal to them through the rest of redemptive history is that you need a king who is way more holy, more righteous, more generous, more good than any man born of Adam can be.

[32:17] You and I, we need a king more powerful than the corruptions of our own hearts. the Israelites thought what they needed was Goliath.

[32:28] This is what it's teeing it up for. Remember, like the normal pattern of a military confrontation would be this. First, from a distance, artillery, arrows flying back and forth.

[32:40] The next round, you send out all the poor people, the peasants that are the infantry, foot soldiers, to thin each other out. Last comes the cavalry, the class that has horses and land, and the cavalry comes in and cleans up.

[32:54] And then finally would come the king. The king has to be protected just like on a chess board. Once you get the king, it's over. But most likely, this setup is preparing for 1 Samuel chapter 17, which is a great confrontation of two federal heads.

[33:10] Rather than this great slaughter of all these nations, infantry and cavalry and artillery, all of that, doing so much damage to both nations, how about we just send out a federal head? You send your best champion, we'll send out our best champion.

[33:24] Let the two of them fight. The loser becomes the slave to the entire nation. So Israel's wanting to play the game on the terms of the enemy.

[33:35] And they're asking for a king that could go do that on their behalf so that they don't have the threat of becoming a slave and maybe get ambitious. Maybe our champion could win and we get to take them as our slaves and expand the land a bit more.

[33:54] You see how God handles the remaining corruptions in our hearts? It's to show there is one champion who can go out in front of the army. He's the one who will crush the head of the greatest foe and he will take captivity captive.

[34:13] And he will purchase on behalf of his whole nation the peace and stability and kingdom and abundance that only he can accomplish. He alone can be that representative federal head, the champion of his nation.

[34:31] Our Lord Jesus Christ, he took on flesh. He became our representative, our federal head. He lived the life of righteousness that would not give anyone anything to point to to say there's no reason I should submit to you.

[34:47] He's perfectly holy and righteous and sinless. You can submit to his rule. He's proved it with his life. And he crushed the serpent's head on the cross. He defeated the enemy.

[35:02] Romans 6.14 says, sin shall have no more dominion over you because Jesus Christ rules over his people.

[35:15] Those remaining corruptions in your heart and mine, they are powerless. Christ has disarmed them. We need Jesus. We need the Lord of lords, the King of kings to be the ruler of our hearts.

[35:30] Only he can be the one to fulfill these desires and to protect us even from ourselves. Because the sin that remains in our hearts is so deceiving and so self-justifying.

[35:43] We need to be ruled by Jesus because he alone understands our temptations. And he alone is wise enough to disarm them. He is more persuasive than the sin that remains in your heart and mine.

[36:01] Our confession states that one of the reasons God exposes our sin even after we're a Christian following him. It's to raise us to a more close and constant dependence and support on Jesus Christ.

[36:18] Do you need that? I know I do. Jesus said in John 15 for abide in me and I in you. The branch cannot bear fruit by itself.

[36:30] He says apart from me you can do not even a little. You can do nothing apart from me unless you abide in Jesus the vine neither can you do anything.

[36:44] You can have confidence that Christ will rule and will continue to conquer over those remaining corruptions in your heart and mine. I won't get tired of using this because I need to get this into my soul.

[36:57] John Flavel Christ is no half savior. This is why you can have this confidence. Did Christ finish his work for us? Did he church? Yes and amen.

[37:09] Then there can be no doubt that he will also finish his work in us. If he began it then no doubt he will finish it. Philippians 1.6 Jesus Christ is not only called the author but also the finisher of our faith.

[37:25] Hebrews 12.2 Still Flavel so dear believers be not discouraged at defects and imperfections in yourselves.

[37:37] Be humbled for them but not dejected. Be convicted but not depressed. Always desire more holiness but never become hopeless.

[37:50] This is Christ's work as well as that. That work was finished and so will this be. Preach this gospel to yourself.

[38:02] God uses those remaining corruptions in his children's hearts for his purpose to make us more dependent on him. And so we sing and we preach to ourselves and to one another my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

[38:21] I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus' name. His oath, his covenant, his blood supports me in the whelming flood when all around my soul gives way, even inside my soul.

[38:42] He then is all my hope and stay. Amen? Amen. Let's pray in response and thank our Lord for his great salvation.

[38:54] Thank