It's a joy every summer to take eight Lord's days and preach through the Psalms.
Some Psalms are longer than others, so we break them into parts.
We've done this for three summers in a row now.
We're going into our fourth summer.
If you do the math, three summers times eight Psalms a summer, that takes us up to Psalm 24.
So today we pick up right where we left off last fall, at the end of the summer.
And our passage today is only the first 11 verses of Psalm 25.
I'll read it trusting that it's God's inspired and near infallible, clear, sufficient word.
It's the powerful word of God in the hands of the spirit.
It's sharper than any two-edged sword to pierce into your soul and to mine.
Hear the word of the Lord.
Psalm 25 verses 1 through 11.
A Psalm of David.
To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
O my God, I trust in you.
Let me not be ashamed.
Let not my enemies triumph over me.
Indeed, let no one who waits on you be ashamed.
Let those be ashamed who deal treacherously without cause.
Show me your ways, O Lord.
Teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth and teach me.
For you are the God of my salvation.
On you I wait all the day.
Remember, O Lord, your loving, tender mercies and your loving kindness.
For they are from of old.
Do not remember the sins of my youth nor my transgressions.
According to your mercy, remember me.
For your goodness sake, O Lord.
Good and upright is the Lord.
Therefore, he teaches sinners in the way.
The humble he guides in justice.
The humble he teaches his way.
All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth.
To such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.
For your name's sake, O Lord.
Pardon my iniquity.
For it is great.
The word of God for the people of God.
Thanks be to God.
Please be seated.
Thank you.
Let's pray.
Amen.
O Lord, we praise you for who you are.
You're a God of ancient loving kindness.
Lord, we praise you for who you are.
Lord, we praise you that you have seen us, your enemies, spiritually dead sinners with great iniquities that we've committed, great sins we've committed against you, the holy God.
Lord, we praise you, Lord.
That in our darkness, you bring your light.
In our bondage to slavery, Lord.
Lord, you set us free by the truth of Jesus Christ.
And we pray that you will do this, Lord.
Lord, in a mighty way.
In a way that you get all the glory.
And that Christ is exalted, Lord, through Psalm 25.
We pray this for Christ's sake.
Amen.
Well, Psalm 25 is a special psalm.
And even in terms of the literature and the structure, there's two things that are unique about this psalm.
We don't speak Hebrew and our Bibles are in our own language, which is English.
So we miss this.
But if we look at these sentences, the beginning of every single sentence starts with a letter.
And you put those letters in order and it follows the Hebrew alphabet.
And so that's called an acrostic.
And so this is the first time that David or any of the psalms use an acrostic to guide the prayer and the singing of the people.
The second reason it's special is because it's the first very clearly penitential psalm.
And that's a big word.
And it means a psalm confessing sin, repenting, practicing penance, you know, repenting and turning away from sin and to God.
And even in the structure and the literature, as the Lord breathed out the psalm through David.
I love this comment by Andrew Benar.
He noted that the Holy Spirit was pleased to pour his words into the mold of human thought and to shape them after the fashion of human speech.
That so he might reveal the secret of the Lord to them that fear him.
So even through the instrument, David, through David's life and circumstances, through David's despairing soul, the condition that he's in, the Holy Spirit is breathing out his glorious word.
And that's what we have in this psalm.
The focus of the psalm, as I mentioned, is repentance.
Let's define that term before we get going.
Repentance is to turn away from sin.
And in that same motion, I'm turning to God.
And in the Bible, in the New Testament, we're told that when Christ is proclaimed, people repent.
When Christ is proclaimed, people believe.
Sometimes they'll say they believe they repent.
Sometimes they'll just say one or the other.
And it's the same motion.
You picture a coin.
It has heads on one side, tails on the other.
The same motion of turning.
It's believe and repent.
It's the same motion.
It's turning away from sin by turning to Christ.
That's what repentance is.
So this psalm is for David.
This psalm is for all of Israel to learn and to sing and to remember the alphabet, the acrostic, and rehearse it over and over and over.
And therefore, this psalm is for sinners like you and me who are saved in Christ.
And maybe some here who don't know this great salvation, but maybe today is the day.
That you will turn from sin by turning to Christ.
You will repent by believing.
So the title of my sermon for you today is a question.
Will you learn comforting repentance from the Lord?
Will you learn comforting repentance from the Lord today?
And maybe for some for the very first time.
I have five observations about comforting repentance through Psalm 25.
Here's the first one.
Comforting repentance begins when we turn from ourselves to the Lord.
Comforting repentance begin when we turn from ourselves to the Lord.
This is a prayer in Psalm 25 of a downcast soul.
That by God's grace, he finally brings this man to the end of himself.
Look at verse one.
David prays to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
His soul needs to be lifted up because it was dragged down low.
And he's lifting up his soul, directing his words to God in prayer.
When we pray, that's what we're doing.
We're declaring things to God.
Trusting that God will hear what we're praying, what we're crying out to him.
Lamentation 344 describes God not answering prayers as being blocking them with clouds that are shrouding God.
So that the prayers of the people are not ascending, not being lifted up or making their way all the way to God.
Here's a soul that's downcast and in his low position, he's he's praying and trusting that these prayers will ascend.
God will hear them on some ground.
What is it that brings a soul down?
We don't get any details and we shouldn't speculate too much on the life of David.
But what we can say is what's common to every person, every every person born of Adam and Eve and and affected by sin in this state of bondage.
And it's the sins and the cares of this world.
It's the remaining sin in our own flesh.
Yes, even if we're a Christian, even if we're united to Christ.
We're brought down by by the enemy, by our own flesh, by the worldliness all around us.
An old preacher used this this illustration about if our soul is like a net and a fisherman picture, you're out in a boat and you're inside the water.
This net will either go down or up.
You're trying to make it go down to gather some fish and then pull it up when you have the fish.
And what they used to push a net down is lead.
You tighten lead to the net and it pulls it down.
And that's our sin.
It's the the entanglements of this life, this fallen world.
And then he says to pull a net up like a fisherman, you attach the corks to it.
You hook it with a cork and the cork floats.
So it's going to pull that net back up.
And the psalm teaches us that our prayers lifted up to God are like the corks that are going to lift the net of our soul back up to the surface.
The psalm 25 is a prayer of a soul that is finally done trusting itself.
Look at verse two.
Oh, my God, I trust in you.
It's a prayer of a soul who confesses the internal threats to peace.
He says, let me not be ashamed.
We feel shame when there's pride in our flesh.
We're looking around to men and it's our own pride inside of us that's threatening our peace.
But it's also the prayer of a soul who confesses a fear of external threats.
He says, let not my enemies triumph over me.
So he's troubled by what's going on inside, by what's going on outside as well.
Verse three.
Indeed, let no one who waits upon you be ashamed, but let those who do treacherously without cause be ashamed.
Between the pride of his own heart within and the enemies that are out there.
This is a soul that's that's got a rock on either side, but he's anchored down deep down on the only immovable object in the midst of this threatening storm.
He says in verse two.
Oh, my God, I trust in you.
No other object has sufficient glory to lift up the human soul.
But the Lord.
This is a prayer of a soul who is done walking in man's ways, who wants to learn the path of the Lord.
Now look at verse four.
Show me your paths.
Oh, Lord.
Teach me your ways.
Someone commented, my ways reflect my will, which is wicked, blind and unstable.
But God's ways reflect his will, which is holy, wise and constant.
So the prayer here.
Show me thy ways.
Oh, Lord.
Let not my will be my guide, nor my own counsel be my counselor.
But let thy will be my rule in thy word, my direction.
He's done following his own ways.
He's turning away from himself and he's turning to the Lord.
And I love how in this psalm he he approaches prayer with what he knows.
Here's something solid.
It's that God needs to be the object of my soul.
When I'm downcast, God alone can lift up my soul and he'll do this through prayer.
Someone pointed out how prayer in a psalm like this one, when you start so low, it's like a builder who builds a structure like a barn.
The first day he pours the foundation and then he goes away.
The next day he comes back and the foundation is still there.
So he adds to that foundation.
The frames goes back, comes back the next day.
The foundation is still there.
The frames are still there.
I'm going to pray again.
And the walls start to fill in.
And so sometimes prayer is the way that the Lord will will build us back up when we're so low and downcast until our soul reaches that communion with God in heaven.
Someone said we need to get on our knees and pray until we have started to pray.
And comforting repentance begins when we turn from ourselves to the Lord.
The Lord is gracious to get our attention and to turn us away from ourselves one way or the other, isn't he?
He's gracious to do that through trial, through difficulty, but he will bring us to the end of ourselves.
Whatever it takes.
And now he will turn to him and he'll receive those prayers every time.
The second observation is this comforting repentance takes place in the presence of the Lord.
A simple statement of fact.
But in prayer, he's he's positioning himself away from anything else and in the presence of the Lord.
Comforting repentance takes place in the presence of the Lord.
It's in the presence of the Lord.
That a heart that's been made alive in God.
A regenerated heart.
That's where we can find our true home.
That's where we need to continually return.
It's only in the presence of the Lord that we can experience deep comfort.
By repenting over and over, turning from sin to God.
It's where a spiritually dead soul would never desire to be.
But once you've tasted life in God through Christ, you won't want to be anywhere else.
Here's the proof that David was already regenerated when he's praying this.
He's praying for repentance, forgiveness of sin.
But if he did not know that the Lord is good, he would not pray.
Verse five, lead me in your truth and teach me.
A person who is proud, who is spiritually dead, would not ask God to teach them or ask God to lead them in the truth.
And here's further and final proof.
Verse five, he says, for you are the God of my salvation.
And so it's a person who is saved, who knows salvation, that's still confessing sin and repenting.
And he says, on you, I wait all the day.
You notice the second time he said to wait on God.
First, he had said, let all those who wait on God not be ashamed.
So he's saying something general.
I know this is true, that those who who trust in the Lord, who wait on him will not be put to shame.
God will not disappoint them.
But now he makes it very personal in verse five.
What I know is true out there in general.
In verse five, he says, on you, I wait all the day.
He's waiting on the Lord.
And trusting that God will slowly comfort him as he repents.
Charles Spurgeon made this observation on waiting upon the Lord as part of comforting repentance.
He wrote sincere penance.
That means to repent, cannot get through confession of sin at a gallop.
A horse goes fast when it's galloping.
And sincere penance cannot get through confession of sin at a gallop.
We are smitten by so innumerable griefs that repentance requires a new bemoaning for each stinging conviction.
Nothing but the clearest and fullest pardon will satisfy an awakened conscience.
He's saying it's a gift when the Lord has made your conscience aware of how holy God is and how false fall short we fall.
Intimate communion with God in prayer is the only power capable of letting you experience comfort in the presence of the Lord.
And this song teaches us to pray in that same way.
Slowly, one sin at a time.
As the spirit shines the light, we bring it back to God and we receive his comfort.
Comforting repentance takes place in the presence of the Lord.
If the Lord is stirring you and stinging your conscience a little bit, let that encourage you that you're experiencing the presence of the holy God with you.
And God is holy.
And this should be the greatest comfort that your conscience is reminding you you need Christ again in this moment.
Third observation.
Comforting repentance flows to us from the character of the Lord himself.
Comforting repentance flows from the character of the Lord.
This is where David's meditation goes next.
And look at verse six.
He says, remember, O Lord, your tender mercies and your loving kindness.
For they are from of old.
The character of God is loving kindness.
The character of God is tender mercy.
And who God is does not change.
It's from of old.
It's from everlasting.
And it's to everlasting.
Someone wrote, O how does one deep inside the sinner call to another deep the character of God?
The depth of my multiplied miseries.
The depth of my multiplied miseries calls, loudly calls upon the depth of God's manifold mercies.
From my multiplied miseries to God's manifold mercies.
One deep calls to the other deep.
Here's three remembers.
First, he says in verse six.
Remember, O Lord, your tender mercies and your loving kindness.
For they are of old.
Lord, remember who you are.
Remember your character, Lord.
That's what I'm appealing to.
The object of remembrance is the Lord himself.
That's the source of his comfort in prayer.
Remember, he says, remember how in the words of Psalm 103 17.
God's tender mercies and loving kindness are from everlasting to everlasting.
Remember how in the words of Deuteronomy 33 27.
God's tender mercies and loving kindness are described as his everlasting arms always underneath you to hold you fast.
Remember how, O Lord, your tender mercies and your loving kindness are sure for me now.
For they are from of old.
Remember, Lord, who you are.
Well, then there's a second object of remembrance.
He says, remember again, but this time he says it in the negative.
Remember not the sin of my youth, nor my transgressions.
In verse five, he's already praised God for being the God of his salvation.
So he already knows that God is merciful to forgive.
That's who God is.
But he still says in verse seven, remember not the sins of my youth.
Christians, believers who are who are being reminded of old sins that we already know God forgave.
We already know God is merciful.
But for whatever reason, it still keeps coming back.
And he's confessing that as well and pleading on who God is.
This is a common experience.
If you experience that like David, these old past sins that you know are forgiven, still coming up in your conscience.
You're not alone.
The story goes of an old man in 87 years old who had been a Christian for over 50 years.
And someone much younger in the faith asked this old saint if he regretted devoting himself to religion so young.
And this tender hearted old man began to well up in his eyes and his voice got quakey.
And he said, oh, no, I weep when I think of the sins of my youth.
It is this.
It's the only thing that makes me weep.
No regret in following Christ.
I just wish I would have followed him sooner and better.
He knows he's forgiven, but it's that loving kindness of God that just melts the heart.
So why repent again of those old sins?
It could be simply because the enemy is accusing David of those old forgiven sins one more time.
And even if David was assured of that pardon of God's sins in his youth, this was helpful to me.
Someone wrote God's servants may pray to keep the blessings they have already in possession and remind themselves of that.
And when we pray confessing those things, we already know God forgave one more time.
I already know you've forgiven this, Lord, but I'm trusting it now again.
God interprets such prayers as praises unto him.
That was someone's comment.
Verse seven, he says, according to your mercy, remember me for your goodness sake.
Oh, Lord, remember me now because of who you are.
For your mercy, Lord, according to your mercy.
Remember me now as one who you have forgiven.
It's the third remembrance.
Remember who you are.
Remember not my sins.
Now remember me.
Remember me because you are Lord.
In the words of Exodus 34 verses six and seven.
You are the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands.
Let me be one among those thousands and forgiving iniquity and transgression of sins.
Remember me because of your promise in Isaiah 43, 25.
You are the one who blots out our transgressions for your own sake.
In Isaiah 48, 11, you promise for my own sake, for my sake, I will do it.
For how shall my name be profaned?
I will not give my glory to another.
So remember me, Lord, as one who receives all that you have promised.
My forgiveness and the comfort of repentance, it flows from the character of the Lord.
Let that comfort you.
Here's the fourth comfort.
Repentance leads to instruction from the Lord.
When we experience comforting repentance, it doesn't just leave us sitting there refreshed and forgiven.
It truly lifts our soul now and calls us to a forward walk.
Comforting repentance leads to instruction from the Lord.
You've noticed up to this point, verses one through seven, the words are directed to God, to you, Lord.
So it's a prayer.
But notice the change now, verses eight, nine and ten.
He speaks of the Lord in third person.
Some have said this is like another person providing instruction to David.
Or maybe it's David simply stating the truth.
You know, like you're going to now teach it to others.
Both could be possible.
He's using poetry.
Some have said this is Christ now.
The second person of the Trinity speaking truth and ministering and him receiving it.
I appreciated John Thomas's comment in our Bible study.
He said it's almost too like he's shifting into a song.
And now like we do in our worship, we're singing about God, knowing that God is here in our presence, ministering to us.
But in any case, it's instruction now for the one who has experienced comforting repentance one more time.
The Lord lovingly instructs us believers away from the path of sin.
Look at verse eight.
He says, good and upright is the Lord.
Therefore, he teaches sinners in the way.
He takes those who just experience forgiveness because they are sinners and he leads us in the good way.
Because God is good, he doesn't abandon sinners, but he teaches them the right path.
This reminds me of the words of our Lord Jesus in Luke 523.
I'm sorry, Luke 532.
He says, I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
He teaches sinners in the way.
Someone wrote that if God requires us to return to our return, our enemy, his string at ox, like he does in Acts 23 for.
See, that's the law of God saying, if your enemy has an ox that went away, you go and help your enemy.
Bring that ox back and do that for your enemy.
So the logic is this.
If God requires that of us in his good law.
He brings us who are his enemies, string like a wild beast also to the good way back to himself by the good law and the promise that he's had all along to redeem sinners.
The Lord lovingly instructs us in the way that is good and upright.
And he has designed this path all along for saved sinners like us.
He's committed himself to prepare us for himself and for all glory, not to leave us a mess, but to slowly put our lives in alignment with Christ.
God does this.
He leads us and makes his people walk rightly with him because of his character as well.
I love this comment by Stephen Charnock.
As election is the effect of God's sovereignty.
He's saying we're chosen because God is sovereign, not because of anything else.
Our pardon is the fruit of his mercy.
So our purity is a beam of his holiness.
Our purity, our growing in holiness and sanctification is simply an extension, like a beam of light from the holiness of God who united us to him.
As the rectitude of the creature at the first creation was the effect of God's holiness.
So the purity of the creature by a new creation is the draft of the same perfection.
It says God is perfect and holy.
And if you have this this keg up here and we're pulling a draft out from whatever's inside of this, it's the character of a holy God.
That's what you're drinking from.
He is he is making you a new creation, calling sinners in the way that we should go.
So the Lord lovingly instructs us the way of life, taking us off the path of sin onto the path of life.
The Lord also lovingly instructs us in the midst of our trouble, through our trouble.
In verse nine, he says the humble God guides in justice.
The humble he teaches his way.
See, he takes those who are low, who are desperate, who are poor and meek and humble.
And he teaches them personally.
John Calvin pointed out that the Hebrew word here denotes the poor or afflicted.
Used metaphorically, meek and humble likely includes the afflictions God uses to restrain our flesh.
When God has first humbled sinners, he then kindly stretches forth his hand to them and leads them on his path.
God loves to humble first to remind us of our spiritual poverty, our great need for him.
And then to guide us in the midst of that trouble to a path of life and peace.
And the Lord lovingly instructs us to walk on the ancient path that he himself has laid down.
Look at verse 10.
All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth to such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.
All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth.
That word for paths here.
It signifies the tracks of a wagon that had gone on this little dirt road.
As a wagon goes on this road over and over again, it makes these ruts into the ground.
And then when the next wagon comes onto those same ruts, it can't get off of them.
It stays on them.
If it starts to veer off, it'll be pulled right back down onto the path that has been laid.
And our wonderful verse 10 says that all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth.
Can't you just picture that?
David leading his cattle on these ancient paths.
And you see the rut on one side, the rut on the other.
And the shepherds reminded on the left side, there's the rut of God's mercy.
On the right side, there's the rut of God's truth.
It's his mercy and his truth that lead me all the way.
I meditate on this ancient path of the Lord.
He will keep me here.
He will guide me.
All his paths can be summed up that way.
That's what they are.
Wherever we go, we see that God's mercy and truth have been there by the deep tracks God has left behind.
Comforting repentance leads to instruction from the Lord.
The Lord instructs us who he's humbled and who he's comforted with his grace.
And then verse 11, he makes another shift back.
He returns to prayer.
He addresses the Lord directly again.
For your name's sake, O Lord, pardon my iniquity, for it is great.
He comes back to this one great lasting thought one more time.
And this is our fifth and final observation for today.
Comforting repentance magnifies the glory of the Lord.
Why does he come back to this final prayer after this closure that we already have with instruction?
I love how someone brought up how it's like the distilled remaining thoughts.
It's for your name's sake.
It's the name of the Lord that's magnified.
That's that's on his mind.
It's that great thought of who God is that lingers with him.
And then what that means for him.
Pardon my iniquity for my iniquity is great.
The more he meditates on God in all his splendor and holiness, all his wonderful attributes.
The more he's aware of the greatness of his own sin.
But comforting repentance magnifies the glory of God.
In verse 11, he says, for your name's sake.
Name implies God's honor and glory.
It's the glory of God to pass over, to forgive an offense.
He says, oh, Lord, pardon my iniquity for it is great.
You see the relationship between the two.
God pardons me and it magnifies the greatness of his name.
What is it that makes our sin so great on the other hand?
It's the greatness of the God against whom I have sinned.
Just as God's mercy is so immense and infinite.
How is God going to display the greatness of his name?
How is God going to display how merciful, how much his loving kindness extends to the worst of sinners?
For God to be glorified, he needs wicked sinners.
I mean, God needs nothing.
This is our way of speaking.
It's how wicked sinners from our perspective see in a magnified way how much God is gracious.
You see how the two work together?
It is necessary to the very greatness of mercy, the God of all mercy, that the sins he will pardon must be great.
The greater the sins, the greater the forgiveness, and therefore the greater is God's glory magnified.
His glory is there all along.
But the more we are aware of our own sinfulness, the more we will appreciate how glorious our gracious God is.
This is why as we read what God did in the life of men like the Apostle Paul,
we can appreciate, we can get a glimpse of this and want more and more and more of it.
Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 1, 13 and 14,
I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, an insolent man.
That word insolent is difficult.
We don't use it much.
Paul is saying, I was so arrogant.
My arrogance was violent.
I was maliciously proud.
But I obtained mercy and the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith and love, which are in Christ Jesus.
Jonathan Edwards knew something of this as well.
As he studied this, he observed David pleads with to God with the greatness of his own sin.
He doesn't come to God pleading for forgiveness because his sin is small.
He does the opposite.
The greater the iniquity, the more David knows he needs God's pardon.
Edwards wrote, when a beggar begs for bread, he will plead the greatness of his poverty and necessity.
When a man is in distress and he cries for pity, what more suitable plea can be argued than the extreme necessity of his case?
And God allows such a plea for this, for he is moved to mercy toward us by nothing in us,
but moved to mercy by the miserableness of our case, not the worthiness.
Just as it is the honor of a physician to cure the most desperate diseases.
Christ's glory consists in his sufficiency to pardon the greatest of sinners.
That's the end of Edwards' quote.
Do you see what he's saying?
The more complicated a disease is, the most difficult the case, the more of an expert the doctor must be.
The more impoverished the beggar.
You're saying, I have nothing.
Please give me even a little bit of bread.
I have truly nothing.
This is the love of God for the worst of sinners.
And that's what David pleads.
He says, Lord, my iniquity is great.
Therefore, please forgive me.
Your glory needs to be magnified because of how much I need your mercy.
Brothers and sisters, we can only appreciate the loving kindness of God,
the abundance of his grace fully in the work that he has done in the person of Jesus Christ.
Our Lord Jesus Christ magnifies the glory of God's name.
It's because his life and righteousness and his death that bore our punishment.
It was his work that secured our pardon.
And it's only because of Jesus Christ that God can truly forget our sins and remember our iniquities no more.
When God thinks of you and me, you know what he remembers?
He remembers the righteousness of Christ for you.
That's what God is pleased to remember.
And to be glorified by covering you completely.
Our Lord Jesus Christ magnifies the glory of God's name because he calls the worst of sinners to himself day after day.
And he reminds you and me.
I already laid down my precious life for you to purchase you with my very own blood.
Now, let me prove myself one more time again to you.
I redeem, I redeem, I restore, and I minister to the worst of sinners like you.
Because this magnifies the glory of God's great, good, and gracious name.
Let me do this again for you today.
Jesus Christ magnifies the glory of God's name because he delights to lift up your downcast soul and mind.
And to usher us into the presence of the living, holy, holy, holy God.
So now, dear brothers and sisters, in Jesus Christ's name, I invite you to enjoy learning from him directly the comfort of repentance from the Lord himself.
Take a moment and do this, this very moment.
Ask him to wash over you, to minister to you.
That you can know this great God for yourself.
For some, maybe for the first time.
I pray that you will.
Let's pray.
To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
Lord, if you had left us to ourselves, we deserve nothing but shame.
But because of Jesus Christ, who came to rescue your enemies, the worst of sinners like us.
And he now lives to plead, to intercede for sinners like us to trust you, to believe in you, to know how good you are.
Because his prayers avail much, Lord, for us.
We trust that you receive our prayers in his name.
Thank you for your great love and forgiveness.
Please teach us, Lord, more and more your righteous paths, which are mercy and truth.
May you be glorified in the lives of your people.
May you draw more into your kingdom.
May you be magnified, Father.
In the work you're doing in this church, we pray.
For your glory alone.
Amen.