Verse 3, I will go out and stand beside my father in the field where you are, and I will speak with my father about you.
Then when I observe what I observe, I will tell you. Thus Jonathan spoke well of David to Saul his father and said to him,
Let not the king sin against his servant, against David, because he has not sinned against you, and because his works have been very good toward you.
For he took his life in his hands and killed the Philistine, and the Lord brought about a great deliverance for all Israel.
You saw it and rejoiced. Why then will you sin against innocent blood to kill David without a cause?
So Saul heeded the voice of Jonathan, and Saul swore, As the Lord lives, he shall not be killed.
Then Jonathan called David, and Jonathan told him all these things.
So Jonathan brought David to Saul, and he was in his presence as in times past.
And there was war again, and David went out and fought with the Philistines and struck them with a mighty blow, and they fled from him.
Now the distressing spirit from the Lord came upon Saul, as he sat in his house with the spear in his hand, and David was playing music with his hand.
Then Saul sought to pin David to the wall with the spear, but he slipped away from Saul's presence, and he drove the spear into the wall.
So David fled and escaped that night.
Saul also sent messengers to David's house to watch him and to kill him in the morning.
And Michal, David's wife, told him, saying, If you do not save your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed.
So Michal let David down through a window, and he went and fled and escaped.
And Michal took an image and laid it in the bed and put a cover of goat's hair for his head and covered it with clothes.
So when Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, He is sick.
Then Saul sent the messengers back to see David, saying, Bring him up to me in bed, that I may kill him.
And when the messengers had come in, there was the image in the bed with a cover of goat's hair for his head.
Then Saul said to Michal, Why have you deceived me like this and sent my enemy away so that he has escaped?
And Michal answered Saul, He said to me, Let me go.
Why should I kill you?
So David fled and escaped and went to Samuel at Ramah and told him all that Saul had done to him.
And he and Samuel went and stayed.
And now Naioth.
The word of God for the people of God.
Thanks be to God.
Please be seated.
Let's pray.
Oh, Lord.
Please help us to see your mighty hand of providence.
Your strength as the refuge, even in a world where your servants are persecuted.
We pray, Lord, that this passage will minister the truth about God to us.
That it will point us to Jesus Christ, our King and our Deliverer.
And that we can trust in you, Lord, through his finished work.
Even as we're in this world and not of it.
We ask this for your glory, for our good.
Amen.
I'll ask a question to the children and everybody else can think if you know the answer.
Don't blurt it out.
How many days does it take for the skin of an average person to completely replace itself?
Have you looked that up before?
How many days for the skin, that outer layer of skin that we itch to totally replace itself?
It only takes 28 to 42 days.
Isn't that amazing?
Every four to six weeks, our skin totally replaces itself.
That means by Christmas time, none of us will be looking the same.
It'll be different skin clothing all of us.
It's like an outer shell totally regenerated.
What happens as I look this up was that new cells on the lowest level of the epidermis, the skin, they generate and they begin to grow.
And as they do that, they push that outer layer of cells out and those cells begin to get dry and hardened.
And then they flake off.
There's new skin forming under and within the old skin in our bodies continually.
Isn't that an amazing fact how God designed us?
And God does nothing by accident.
God designed us magnificently.
And everything he did can teach us something about how he works.
New skin under and within the old.
After a lot of wrestling with this passage, it's a hard one.
Came up with this title.
What we have in these first 18 verses is a new king under and within a cursed kingdom.
Israel is cursed under Saul.
God's given a promise.
I'll generate a new king.
I'll bring this to bear.
But right now, David is not king.
And Saul is not yet replaced.
I want us to be encouraged because what God has done in redemptive history, he is applying to you and me also.
Personally.
Second Corinthians 416 encourages us with this.
Christians do not lose heart.
Though the outward self is wasting away.
Yet your inner self is being renewed day by day.
God is working.
And he's applying to us to the inner man and working it out from there.
What he's already accomplished.
We get a wonderful illustration, I believe, of what God has accomplished in these first 18 verses.
A new king within the cursed kingdom.
So first, I want to point out how this old kingdom is cursed under Saul.
Point number one.
Curses flow from the old king.
In Deuteronomy chapters 28 and 29.
The second generation after being delivered out of slavery is about to enter the promised land.
And the Lord preaches through Moses to them.
As you go into this place, I have prepared for you.
You will receive blessings for obeying me.
But if you disobey me, you will receive curses.
And the principle that's then set up now as we enter the period of monarchy, of life within the land, is the principle of federal headship.
As goes the king, so goes the kingdom.
And so as Saul is now a lawbreaker, rejecting God's rule over his own life, so goes the kingdom of Israel.
Remember with Samuel who feared God, there was victory over the Philistines.
The moment Saul came in, now they're hiding away.
They're losing on every front.
But the Lord brings David.
And now there's victory again over the Philistines.
As goes the king, so goes the kingdom.
This is being set up for us.
So look at our passage, verse 1.
Now Saul spoke to Jonathan his son and to all his servants.
Think of how many servants in the army were at the disposal of the king of this nation.
And what did he tell them in verse 1?
That they should kill David.
The commander-in-chief gives the order of execution.
You bear the sword to do the king's bidding.
Jonathan is the prince, the crown prince.
This is a direct threat now for him having the throne.
And all of Saul's servants get the same command.
But we keep reading that Jonathan, Saul's son, delighted greatly in David.
He didn't delight greatly in Saul or in the throne or in his own prospects of becoming the king.
He delighted in this humble one that God had clearly anointed.
And with whom was the spirit of God.
So Jonathan warned him in verse 5.
This is to kill him, King Saul.
It's to sin against innocent blood.
To kill David without a cause is to break God's law.
And we owe obedience to you as king only to the extent that you are obeying God.
You're a disobedient king.
So your command on me is not binding.
And listen to Saul's response in verse 6.
So Saul heeded the voice of Jonathan.
And Saul swore.
Now remember, he's one for making rash oaths.
Remember the honey that he said you weren't allowed to eat that after great victory.
He says, as the Lord lives, David shall not be killed.
But if you skip down to verse 9, we see how a distressing spirit was upon Saul.
And he sat in his house with the spear in his hand.
While David plays music with his hand.
And Saul sought to pin David to the wall with the spear.
Even though he had just sworn by the Lord himself, no one will do harm to David.
So we see in King Saul, a miserable, cursed rain.
Can you picture this king sitting there?
It says, in his home with the spear in his hand.
Verse 8.
He didn't send all these soldiers out to fight the Philistines.
And he's in his own home holding a spear.
Look at verse 8.
David was the one that went out.
He led the armies to war.
He fought with the Philistines.
He struck the Philistines, the enemies of the nation, with a mighty blow.
And the enemies of the nation of Israel, God's people, they fled from David, leading the army.
Pay attention to the end of that verse.
They fled from David.
Verse 8.
The true enemies of God are fleeing from him.
But what we see in the rest of the story is David now having to flee from Saul.
It's that same language used now of the coming king being on the run.
And the reason for this is because in Saul's own words, he viewed David as his enemy.
You see how messed up the kingdom is under Saul.
The servant of the Lord, he views as an enemy.
He swears by God's name and on the other hand breaks the very thing he swore.
And he's confusing the whole nation.
He's misallocating the resources.
He's causing infighting and turmoil within the kingdom.
When the true enemies are left out there for someone else to go fight.
So we read in verse 10, David then fled and escaped.
And then in verse 11, Saul sent messengers to chase him down even after he escaped the first time.
This king is relentless.
He will stop at nothing to kill what threatens his power and his idol.
An old hymn puts it this way.
And I relate this pattern of so as goes the king, so goes the kingdom all the way back to the fall of Adam in the garden.
All mankind said the old hymn fell in Adam's fall.
One common sin affects us all.
From sire to son, the bane descends and over all the curse impends.
So as a king of the nation, Saul is like a second Adam.
And his actions are bringing trouble for all God's people under his rule.
The church has always been met with trouble.
And many times it's from within.
And within those who claim to belong to God's kingdom.
This hymn that I just read from was written in German by a man named Lazarus Spengler.
He was a contemporary of Martin Luther.
He lived at the same time as Martin Luther and the Reformation studied under him.
And he, along with Martin Luther, were both excommunicated from the Holy Roman Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation in the year 1521.
And this hymn he wrote three years later.
He saw the effects of the curse.
And he saw this still needing to be cleaned up within those claiming to be the kingdom of God now in the church.
Curses flow from the old king.
The second point is this.
Blessings flow through the new king.
Blessings are already starting to flow to God's people through David, the anointed one, the coming king.
I want to show you one more time like we've done before with the way that this narrative is put together.
There's corresponding vocabulary.
And even as I was reading these first 18 verses, you're probably hearing these words repeat themselves.
And it's hard, isn't it, to put our finger on it and analyze it and figure out how are we supposed to make sense of this passage as one unit?
What is the author trying to emphasize?
You know, these people, we can view them as ancient, primitive.
Remember, just last chapter, they did a post-mortem surgery on 200 Philistine soldiers and presented that to King Saul.
But these people are just as intelligent.
They're God's image bearers.
And the human author, I think it's most likely Samuel at this point, is using masterful Hebrew narrative writing to draw our attention to his main point.
And not to mention the Holy Spirit superintending the writing of this narrative.
So what I believe it's all pointing to gives us insight into the blessings that will flow through David, even in the messiness of Israel under Saul.
Three steps here I would like to walk you through.
The first one is this.
Put one finger on verse one.
I'm going to try to show you corresponding language.
In verse one, Saul spoke to Jonathan, his son.
And he's telling, then Jonathan now goes to tell David, Saul wants to kill you.
So the corresponding language is Saul speaking to one of his children.
The message, he's going to kill you.
Now, if you skip down with your other finger to verse 17, Saul says to Michal, his daughter, and she goes around and tells her dad a lie.
He says, David said, why should I kill you?
So Saul speaking to a child, kill you.
Corresponding language.
That's the first movement.
Now bring them closer to each other.
Put that first finger on verse six.
David was in Saul's presence.
In verse six, put your second finger on verse 10.
David slipped away from Saul's presence.
You see the corresponding language as it gets closer.
The third and final movement now, I believe, is the main point of this passage.
There was war again.
Curses for Saul's disobedience.
The Philistines trying to invade the land.
And David went out and fought with the Philistines and struck them with a mighty blow.
And they fled from him.
So this narrative is created that way.
Here's Saul speaking to one of his children.
At the beginning, Saul speaking to another one of his children at the end.
And in the middle is David going in and out and winning wars against God's true enemies.
As goes the king, so goes the kingdom.
God is beginning to bless the army and giving victory to all of Israel through David, despite the curses that Saul brought on the kingdom.
Blessings flow through the new king.
The third point is this.
The seed of the old shall side with the new king.
Both Jonathan and Michal were the seed or the children of wicked king Saul.
And we see this, even though they're opposites of one another in many ways.
We see this wonderful little glimpse that this seed, even though they're from the household that's cursed.
First, they will side with the new king.
When there's a change in regime, especially in the old world, the new regime that comes in tries to kill off all the seed of the old.
This happens in political parties as well.
You can travel to a small town in Brazil and you'll see a bunch of cinder block buildings halfway built.
And you ask someone that's been there for 12 years or so, why is that halfway built and been sitting there for years?
And it's because it was a project from one political party.
And when there was a change in the election, it got abandoned.
They're not going to finish off what another party started.
So the whole city is like half built.
And in the old kingdom, that happens as well.
When David comes to power, remember the expectation is that he would kill all of Jonathan's seed.
And so that's what was expected.
David is that big of a threat to both Jonathan and Michal.
You've got to remove the competition, show your power, make an example of any who would challenge your rule.
But the irony here is that these two children from the household of this wicked king are the ones God uses to spare the life of the one who is the biggest threat to them.
I want to point out first the similarities between Jonathan and Michal.
See if you agree with me.
Both, I think, are portrayed as opposites in many ways.
But first, there are some similarities.
They were both born under Saul's curses.
Both are made to love the new king.
We read in verse 1 that even though Saul commanded the whole army to kill David,
Jonathan, Saul's son, delighted greatly in David.
Now look down at verse 28 for Michal.
Saul saw Saul and knew that the Lord was with David and that Michal, his daughter, loved him.
So both of them were made to love this new king that was coming.
Both helped David survive a deadly night.
Look at verse 2 for Jonathan's.
It says, please be on your guard until morning.
So there's David waiting to see what's going to happen.
Will he survive this night?
And Jonathan's helping him.
And now look at verse 11.
Saul sent messengers to David's house.
And he's married to Michal.
So it's her house as well to watch him there and to kill him in the morning.
So over the night, David's life is on the line.
And Michal, David's wife, told him, saying,
If you do not save your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed.
Similar message as her brother Jonathan to this new coming king.
And the last similarity I saw is that both directly speak with the old king about the new.
In verse 3, Jonathan says, I will speak with my father about you.
And Michal does the same.
She's addressing Saul about David in verse 17.
But the differences are really what stand out.
In verses 3 through 5, we focus on Jonathan.
And everything I point out about Jonathan, you're going to see a counterpoint with Michal, his sister.
In verse 3, Jonathan says, I will speak with my father about you.
And what Jonathan speaks to Saul is truth.
He uses persuasion, logic, and truth.
Jonathan trusted in the one true God.
Verse 4, he says, let not the king sin.
Saul, your actions are against the one true God.
And he quotes the law of God.
He says, David has not sinned against you.
And that's the standard by which both you and David are measured.
It's the God.
Jonathan told this old sinner, his dad, what was good for him.
Verse 4, his works have been very good toward you, father.
Speaking the truth in love, it's gracious to speak the truth in this way.
And Jonathan pointed to David's selfless sacrifice.
In verse 5, Jonathan says, dad, he took his life in his hands and killed the Philistine.
Jonathan also recognized the true God alone is the one who delivers his people.
He says, the Lord brought about a great deliverance for all Israel.
You see, Jonathan is wise and he's insightful.
He's not giving credit to David.
It was the Lord who did that.
The Lord is the deliverer through this servant.
He says, you saw it and rejoiced at that.
And then Jonathan saw the law as a good gift from God.
He says, why then do you sin against innocent blood?
See, the king is bearing the sword.
He has the power to execute, but only with justice.
If someone has not a cause to be slain, then it's unjust.
And it's an improper use of the power God's entrusted to the hand of the king.
You could say Jonathan saw the law of God as a good thing, as a loving gift from the Lord of hosts.
Now, on the other side of the equation, listen for the contrast.
Michal in verses 13 through 18.
Michal trusted in a false God.
In verse 13, Michal took an image and laid it in the bed and put a cover of goats here for the head and covered it with clothes.
Think about it.
If she's already going to be bringing extra clothes and blankets made up from goats here and shaping the clothes and the goats here to look like David laying there under the covers.
Why does she also need to put what's translated as a household idol?
The Hebrew word is teraphim.
These are little figurines, little statues that the Philistines and the pagans would use within their homes to pray to idols and to demons.
If she's already using these other things to make the shape of a body, why would she also try to put these idols in the bed?
Jonathan trusted in the one true God and Michal seems to be trusting false gods instead.
In verse 13, Michal took an image and she doesn't only trust the image.
She also then acts according to those values instead of the kingdom of God.
She uses lies twice where Jonathan used the truth.
In verse 14, when Saul sent messengers to take David, she said he is sick.
OK, maybe that's like one of those lies that, you know, is for a better cause, a greater good.
And then Michal told this old sinner what was good for her.
His works have been, I'm sorry, she's saying to spare my own life.
It's what's good for her when she lies the second time.
In verse 18, Michal tells Saul, he said, let me go.
Should I kill you also?
Why should I kill you?
And so we see the contrast.
Michal saw herself as David's deliverer.
Where Jonathan saw God as the deliverer of his people.
So if you're like me, we're still left with questions about this passage.
What does it all mean?
What should it teach us?
Before we go to that last movement, I want to focus on one more of the main characters here, which is David.
Look at verse 12.
So Michal let David down through a window.
And he went and fled and escaped.
That's a restless night.
And we know where he eventually ends up.
It's in a different city where Samuel is.
And we'll get to that, Lord willing, in the next week or two.
But for that night, when he slips out the window and there's guards surrounding the palace where he's living and sleeping.
What did David do?
You and I are at times having sleepless nights.
We're persecuted.
I think some in here are losing sleep because of spiritual warfare as well.
The battle is more real than we want to admit.
What David did in verse 12 is a great encouragement.
He prayed.
As David prayed, the Holy Spirit was upon him.
And the Holy Spirit helped this hunted servant to pray.
And the prayer of David turned into a poem.
And the poem took the shape of a song.
These emotions you can only imagine he was feeling were eventually channeled into a melody.
How do I know all of this?
It's not in our passage, but Psalm 59 tells us that.
Psalm 59, you're welcome to turn there.
I'll read a few verses.
You can listen.
It's titled, A Mictum of David.
A mictum is a composition of great value, possibly to be engraved or preserved on a tablet.
And so these got the nickname of golden psalms.
In other words, these are special ones to David.
This was an intense night.
And the occasion of Psalm 59 says the inspired superscription was when Saul sent men and they watched the house in order to kill him.
Listen to David's prayer.
May this be an encouragement for you in the spiritual battle when you feel hunted down.
Deliver me from my enemies, O God.
Verse 1.
Defend me from those who rise up against me.
Deliver me from the workers of iniquity and save me from bloodthirsty men.
For look, they lie in wait for my life.
The mighty gather against me.
Not for my transgression nor my sin, O Lord.
They run and prepare themselves through no fault of mine.
Awake to help me and behold.
You therefore, O Lord, O God of hosts.
Verse 14.
And at evening they return.
They growl like a dog and go all around the city.
They wander up and down for food and they howl as if they are not satisfied.
But I will sing of your power.
Yes, I will sing aloud of your mercy in the morning.
For you have been my defense and refuge in the day of my trouble.
To you, O my strength, I will sing praises.
For God is my defense.
My God of mercy.
Amen.
Well, Saul was the enemy.
The attacker of this hunted servant of God.
But Saul was really just broken.
A broken vessel driven by his own selfish jealousy and human madness.
Saul's wrath was cruel.
But it sprung up from his own petty pride.
Proverbs 27.4 says,
Wrath is cruel and anger a flood.
But who can stand before jealousy?
And it seems like cruelty, anger, and jealousy were all a mixed tumultuous mess inside of Saul.
But we have an even greater enemy.
An even greater hunter.
Wanting to destroy God's people.
Greater than Saul.
This is the language God used to describe Satan.
Someone commented,
Saul, his hunting was local and temporary.
A mere storm soon spent.
It'll blow over.
But Satan is the engine of all malice.
That's the end of the quote.
Revelation 12.10 calls Satan the accuser of the brethren.
Of the believers.
Of the members of churches.
Of those who are disciples of Christ.
They're still being accused by Satan.
Satan's motive is much deeper than Saul's.
Satan's motive is irreversible spiritual hatred for the Lord and his seed.
In John 8.44, Jesus said that Satan was a murderer from the beginning.
And Satan stands before God as a prosecutor.
Accusing the brethren.
The church.
The believers.
Demanding judgment based on the holy law of God.
And Galatians 3.10 tells us the law says,
Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.
And Saul's pursuit of David was local.
And would end when his life was over.
But Satan's pursuit is universal.
It's after every believer.
And it's ceaseless.
He never stops.
It's like Luther's hymn.
The old and malicious foe intends us deadly woe.
But we don't need to be afraid.
We may have those sleepless nights and the Lord will let us battle in prayer on our knees.
With our Bibles open.
With our songs open on our mind.
And even when we don't know how to pray, Romans 8.26 encourages us that the Spirit also helps us in our weakness.
The Spirit helped David breathe out Psalm 59 through his prayer.
And the Lord will help us in the same way.
Romans 8.26 goes on to say,
For we do what we do not know.
Even what we don't know we should pray for as we ought.
The Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groaning which cannot be uttered.
So when you feel like you're a servant of God.
God is your king.
You're in the curses of this world.
And you feel hunted down by sin, Satan, and the world.
Pray.
Get on your knees.
Open up your Bible.
Pray through Psalm 59.
And God will be our deliverer just as he was for David.
Well, the final movement I'd like to walk us through is how is this difficult passage fulfilled by the king of kings?
The new king, the channel of blessings, the old king, the curses being reversed.
How is Jesus Christ, our victorious king, fulfilling all of this?
Remember verse 9, the center of it.
David went out.
He led the army out to battle and he came back victorious.
This points to Jesus Christ.
He went out.
He fought against sin and Satan and death and hell.
He struck them with a mighty blow.
They fled from him.
David escaped death.
He died by avoiding it.
Saul threw the javelin.
David escaped it and it got pinned to the wall instead.
But Jesus Christ overcame death by enduring death.
He died and was buried.
Our sin was killed.
Our sin became powerless.
Our sin is buried.
It's out of God's mind forever.
Jesus Christ did not stay dead.
He arose victorious.
That same hymn by that reformer has a line that says this.
Jesus Christ, the second Adam, came to bear our sin and woe and shame.
To be our life, our light, our way, our only hope, our only stay.
Jonathan was held up, I believe, to us in this passage as the ideal believer, the ideal Israelite.
Those who would trust in the Lord under the old covenant like Abraham, Joseph and Daniel, looking to the promise of the Messiah, even in the shadow of a man like David.
Believers who trusted in the Lord.
Believers who trusted in the Lord under the old covenant.
When Christ arrived at the scene, the spirit illumined their eyes to behold him.
They they received him as the king of kings.
They were prepared.
I'm reminded of Nicodemus, of Joseph of Arimathea and even saw who God renamed as Paul.
They gladly received King Jesus once they saw him for who he is.
Well, if Saul is how Jonathan is held up as that faithful, believing Israelite, someone who who loved God, but under the old covenant until they beheld Christ.
What do we make of the other child of Saul, the other sibling?
Michal.
I don't think the point of this passage is to necessarily deduce when and when we should and should not lie.
You know, it's not moralist lessons.
It's really, I think, an encouragement of God's grace.
At least for me and my study.
Michal prepares us to know what this will be like when the true Messiah arrives.
Anyone who can read these old stories can know when you see the Messiah, the king of kings coming.
He will be married to a bride that was born noble like Michal, but who became worldly, even idolatrous.
And a liar.
But whom in her sin God will cause to love the new king.
And to not be under the curses of the old king any longer.
And to be his bride.
To choose Jesus Christ over Adam.
Her old king and slave master would have no claim on her anymore.
I think Michal is like me.
And like you, a Gentile.
A sinner.
That Christ claims now as his bride.
Brings into his church.
In verse 5, the Lord brought about a great deliverance for all God's people.
Jonathan's bearing witness to what God had done and he's reminding the people again.
And this is what we do in looking back at an ancient narrative like this.
We remind one another.
It's the Lord who brings about the great deliverance for all God's people.
He did this through Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ led the army into victory and came back victorious and shares the spoil with the army.
Through Jesus Christ come the blessings of his perfect obedience, not ours.
Just as Jonathan stood between David and the enemy, Saul, who wanted to kill him.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, he stands between sinners like you and me.
And God as our intercessor.
And he defends us where Satan accuses.
And God is just.
He receives the arguments, the persuasion of Jesus Christ, which puts the enemy, the accuser, to silence.
We don't put our hope in kings or princes like we're told in Psalm 146.3.
In whom there is no help.
If Israel had just put their hope in King Saul or even Jonathan, they would be disappointed.
Saul was crazy.
He would get these bouts of mood swings and he would seem crazy and mad at times.
But our hope is built on the oath of God himself.
The eternal covenant of redemption.
The pledge of the Father to the Son.
Fulfill this mission and I will give you the people as your inheritance.
And our Lord Jesus Christ accomplished the mission and now he lives to make intercession, to pray for his people.
Romans 8.34 says,
It is Christ who died and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.
1 John 2.1 encourages the church.
If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father.
Jesus Christ, the righteous.
We look to Christ and he pleads his own blood.
His own blood lives to make intercession for his people, says Hebrews 7.25.
So just as God preserved David in this cursed kingdom, in Jesus Christ, our preservation is also guaranteed.
We've been delivered from the law's curse by our righteous mediators' plea for us as people.
So as his church, we go forth and we live in confidence in our deliverer.
Jesus Christ, the new king, the king of kings, he has entered into this world, this cursed kingdom.
And he's undoing the curse of Adam.
2 Corinthians 4.16 reminds us,
Therefore we do not lose heart.
Though our outward self is wasting away in this world, yet our inner self is being renewed day by day.
The work of restoring his people has already begun.
One day this earth will be made new.
It will be restored completely.
And until then, in Christ we live as citizens, as soldiers, as heirs of his heavenly kingdom.
In Christ we are not of this world that we're in any longer.
We're not of this cursed kingdom.
But we're also not alone in this cursed kingdom.
Jesus says, I am with you always, even to the very end.
Our deliverer is with us.
Just as David remained in the presence of Saul in that wicked kingdom.
Luther's hymn finishes off,
The body they may kill.
God's truth abideth still.
Because his kingdom is forever.
Amen.
Let's pray and thank him for his mighty power.
Oh Lord, we thank you for how Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all your promises.
From the very beginning, Genesis all the way to Revelation.
In him we put all of our hope.
He is the yes and the amen.
Our only redeemer.
Our only deliverer.
Help us to rest in the kingdom of heaven.
Amen.
Even while we're in this world, Lord.
For your name we pray.
Amen.