The Justice + Blessing of God

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

We are going to continue our sermon series. We're going to be back in the book of Hosea today, so if you want to start turning there, we're going to be continuing our sermon series on biting bullets. Biting bullets, that phrase, bite the bullet, means to endure something both necessary and extremely difficult or painful. And if we're going to bite bullets, you know, when we are disciplining our children, for example, we often need to bite bullets. When we are giving a painful report at work, we need to bite bullets. When we are confronting strained relationships, we need to bite bullets. It's something that we need to do. We don't want to do. However, we understand that it is necessary. And so this is the message of the 12 prophets, the minor prophets at the end of the Old Testament from Hosea all the way to Malachi. We begin, in all of them, we begin with this necessary and difficult thing to hear.

And that is you are betraying God and you do not care. saying to his people, you are betraying me and you do not care. As we read the minor prophets, the majority of the content, like so if you were to just pick a random place in Hosea through Malachi, the majority of that content, it details the offenses of God's people. It says you've done this, You've done this, you've done this, and it reads like a laundry list of things that they have done. And it talks about how God will bring justice to those offenses.

Are y'all getting an echo? Okay. And so how God is going to bring justice... So if you were to example, if you were to just you know drop in the middle of Malachi like we're gonna be doing today, in Malachi 4, and we're going to read it, but it's God bringing justice like he's going to, he's going to mow the people down. He's going to bring fire. He's going to, you know, it's going to be like an oven, he says, in Malachi 4. And all of that is God bringing justice to those offenses. And the list of offenses is so painful, but the problem is when we read any part of the minor prophet, we don't really understand, we don't really feel the weight of what is wrong, of what is going on in the minor prophets, of what's going on with God's people. And also right here, when we start to talk about the justice of God, when we start to talk about God visiting his people with a raging fire to bring his wrath to full measure

onto his people, we start getting into really uncomfortable territory as Christians. We start getting into territory in the Old Testament where we feel like we need to apologize, or we need to start saying, well, God's not like this anymore, or, well, that's the the God of the Old Testament, not the God of the New Testament. We start saying things that are untrue because we don't really know how this fits. We don't see it. We don't understand it. We don't understand the judgment of God. And so it is right here in the Minor Prophets where God is actually the most misrepresented, even by Christians today, by preachers and atheists alike. God is misrepresented when we do not understand what is going on in minor prophets whenever God is bringing justice. The first thing I think that is appropriate to do is that we need to feel the weight. We need to understand what God's people were doing and why it was so bad that the sin of

God's people needed justice. And so we're just going to focus on three main areas and I've just done the, you know, I want to put them in a sentence. So we're going to look, we're going to just kind of bounce around. We're going to get back to Hosea, but we're going to bounce around to Habakkuk and a a couple other places. So you can follow along on the screen. We're going to start in Habakkuk 218. God is saying, what prophet is an idol when its maker has shaped it? A metal image, a teacher of lies, for its maker trusts in his own creation when he makes speechless idols. So they're practicing idolatry, but the sentence that I want to say is the sentence is, you will not provide. God's people, as they are making idols, they are saying to God directly and by their behavior, they are saying, you will not give me what I need. An idol, a house idol, the kind

that you make and that you put up in your house. So, I mean, this is really how it worked. When we're talking about idol worship, it wasn't just going to some temple and, you know, kissing a the golden calf, a lot of times it was a poor farmer out in the field and he would just make this little idol out of clay and he would pray to it. Why? Because he needed crops. He needed his livelihood to come in that season. The farmer, or the livestock, or the rancher would say, hey, pray to his household idol, like hey, I need to have a lot of new babies this year, so I'm going to pray to my little household God. There were fertility gods. You need to have children this year. Pray to your fertility God. It was more than just some lucky rabbit's foot. It was a way for people to feel like they were doing something to ensure their own future, to ensure their own prosperity. They were making idols, but like it says

in Habakkuk 2 18, they were really trusting in their own creation. They were really trusting in themselves. And so what they have said to God by practicing idolatry, they have said, you, God, will not provide, and so I am on my own. You will not provide, and so I am on my own. That was one thing they were doing. I want to cover two more. The second thing we see is in Amos 5:11, and again in Micah 6, Amos 5:11, therefore, because As you trample on the poor and you exact taxes of grain from him, you have built houses of hewn stone. Hewn stone was very expensive. But you shall not dwell in them. You have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine." Let me just give a little bit of context to there. You trample on the poor, you exact taxes of grain from him. So this is not just the idea of exacting taxes. This is taxing heavily. is trampling on people that cannot afford to pay what they are, what they would need

to pay in terms of taxes, right? And so there are people that Amos is talking to, there are people that are getting rich off of extorting poor people, right? So they're building for themselves houses of hewn stone, which are again, were very expensive. They have planted pleasant vineyards, right? They've gotten rich off of extorting poor people. I know that doesn't happen anymore today. Laughing on cue, it's good. It's good to do that.

We'll look at another account, Micah 6, 11 through 12. Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales and with a bag of deceitful weights? Your rich men are full of violence, your inhabitants speak lies, their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. The idea of wicked scales or deceitful weights, that's how you measured how much things were worth. And so if I'm a trader and somebody comes to my table and I have these things, well how much she owe me, right? Then I would put either weights that were lighter or heavier than they were supposed to be so that my stuff would be considered more valuable. So I would get more money for things that weighed less. Does that make sense? So I am now, what is happening here is that what we see in Amos and Micah and really all through the minor profits, had people that were extorting poor people or dumb people. They were taking advantage

of people for dishonest gain. And what they are saying, the statement that is resounding through that is that, you God, you are not powerful or you are not real. There will be no judgment on me for oppressing the poor. Because God, you aren't going to defend them. If you're even there, God's people truly did not believe that He was able to stop this injustice. And when you believe God will not hold people accountable, when you believe that God is not powerful or that He is not even aware of what's going on, He's not even real. You will end up with a statement of, I can do whatever I want. If God is not there to keep people accountable, if God is not watching, if God does not care about the poor, then the poor are oppressed. When they're in a country, when there is no fear of God's power, the vulnerable suffer the worst. It's the widows that pay. It's the immigrants that pay.

It's the fatherless that pay. It's the orphans that pay. Why? Because they don't have any political sway. They're not a voting block that anyone cares about. When there is no fear of God's power, the vulnerable suffer the most. And this is exactly what was happening in the minor prophets. This is the situation they were speaking into. It wasn't just that people were depending on themselves, making false idols and praying to them. It's that they were also that turned into, well, God's not really around. God's not really going to help people that are poor. Well, then what fear do I need to have? I can do whatever I want. I can bully anybody I want. I can take advantage of whoever I please. And we see this happen in a different way in Malachi 2, 13 through 14. Here's the third thing they were doing. It says, And this second thing you do, this is the Lord talking to His people,

you cover the Lord's altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. But you say, you people, you say to me, why does He not? Why does He not accept our offering? Here's the answer, because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth to whom you have been faithless. though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. There are other places in the Minor Prophets where it talks about, you know, you invite your neighbors over, you get them drunk so that you could see their nakedness. You had sexual promiscuity, not just adultery, but sexual promiscuity happening all over in and among God's people. And ironically, this is the statement that they're rehearsing in their mind. God, you have cheated me.

You have cheated me. You're holding out on me. There's something I could have had that's better. I could have had a better wife. I could have had a better sexual experience. I could have had this over here. God, you cheated me. So I deserve something better, so I'm going to take it on my own. It's promiscuity. It is the vindicated, or at least the feeling of a vindicated wandering. I'm going to abandon my covenants with people. I'm going to take things that I've chosen and go, well, maybe I could have done a better job. I'm just going to do a redo on that. And in this situation in particular that the minor prophets are speaking to, the men held much more political power and power period of any kind than women. So men could just leave their wives destitute or they could stay married, but then have a bunch of mistresses and there wasn't anything their wives could really do.

And as you read further in, and we don't have the time to go into it, although I wish we did, when you read further in, These things you will not provide, you are not powerful and you have cheated me. These are refrains that come up, not just from the dregs of humanity, not just from the people that are on the outside. It is coming from... It is loudest among the leaders of Israel, among the governors, among the priests. Right? In Malachi too, when he's saying you have been faithless, He's saying that to the priests. These are the paid religious professionals of their day.

These are the leaders, these are the paid, they're governors, they're mayors, these are the people that they look up to and these are the people, the leaders are the people that are saying, God won't provide. God's not powerful, He's not here. He's not gonna stop the oppression of the poor. God's cheated me. I could have done so much better. And just let's be really clear, it didn't just make them, you know, sort of good people who were making household gods on the side and kind of hiding them. No. The sins that God's people were indulging in, that they were drinking daily, were ruining the fabric of their society. It created injustices on every level. I did bring up the leaders, but it wasn't just the leaders that were creating the injustice. It wasn't just the elite, it wasn't just the powerful, it wasn't just the religious, it wasn't just the irreligious, it was everybody.

God's people were in a state of spiritual bankruptcy. There was so much wrong. And when we understand that that is happening, and I really, you know, I want to just give you, I want to give you a picture. And I want you to think about how you'd react in this picture. I want you to just imagine you walk out of a restaurant and you look over and you see a grown man beating the life out of a six year old girl. I mean, I really want you to think, I really want you to think about it, it's unpleasant, but I want you to think about it. What's the first emotion that comes to you? Anger. Anger. And it should be. That man, whoever that horrible person is, there's no reason to beat down a six-year-old girl. None. That stirs within us an anger and an outrage that God feels. Right? We understand how God feels towards sin when we capture that moment where we are outraged at what's going on, at this injustice that is happening.

We would definitely raise our voice. We would definitely even physically assault the man if we thought it would be helpful. We'd pick up a baseball bat for crying out loud. We would do anything within our power to save that six-year-old girl from being beaten down by a grown man. We would. We should. This is nothing to apologize for. We don't need to consider the man's feelings. We don't need to think, well, maybe he's just having a bad day. It's unconscionable to think that way. That man deserves swift and powerful and memorable justice. That's exactly what he deserves. Okay, in that scenario, we're the man, me and you.

When God sees us, when we are left to our own devices, we are no better than a grown man beating a six-year-old girl for no good reason. That's us. And all the hatred, all the frustration, all the anger that we feel whenever we look at a situation like that, multiply it times a million, and maybe you're gonna get to what God feels when he sees his children, his people perpetrating that

on each other and outside nations. This is not a simple sort of thing that's sort of going on on the side. This is perpetrated. This is layers of generational pain and oppression that is going on. Whenever, by the time the minor prophets are on the scene, Things are far gone. It is bad. It is a ruined society. And so just think about it. If you're God and you see that, what would you do? I mean, if it's us and we see the guy beating the girl, I mean, I take a lead pipe to the guy, even if he was bigger than me. I mean, I would do everything to make that guy unconscious and call the police immediately. No, I wouldn't ask him how he felt about it. I don't care. What would you do? And if you're God, you have a different way forward with this because God could have just like eradicated everybody, but he doesn't. He doesn't do that. He actually works to make it right.

Think about how difficult that would be. God attempts to make it right. And so last week we started talking about what God's plan is. People are betraying him, they don't care, it's bad. What's God's plan? His first plan is to shake his people awake for you to say, you say, open your eyes, pull back the curtain on your own life. Realize you don't, you're growing more numb by the day. You aren't having a sensitivity to what the Spirit is saying. But now in the minor prophets, now that people are awake, God needs them to walk through the depth of their betrayal. Justice is required. Let me say this, justice is required in order to mend their relationship with the Lord God and ultimately with each other. Often when we talk about the justice of God, we talk about it like he's rubbing it in or like he enjoys it, right? Or that he's like toying with us. Because really, when God brings that kind of justice,

he's done with us, right? God's done. That's the impression that we get. The reality is that when God brings that kind of justice, the opposite is true. Justice needs to be brought and needs to be thorough in order for our relationship with Him to prosper. I want you to imagine that you have a friend, you've discovered this friend that's been gossiping about you, talking behind your back, talking bad behind your back, and when confronted, you confront that friend. You say, hey, hang on, are you talking about me behind my back? And they say, oh yeah, I'm really sorry, I'll never do it again. No. That's not the end of the conversation, right? The conversation is going to continue to say, well, what was going through your mind when you were doing that to me? How did that make sense to you? Is there another issue that we have to deal with? Like, you're going to want to walk through that.

Why? Because you want to rub their nose in it? No. Because if you don't do that, if you don't walk through that together, your relationship remains broken. Trust is not mended. Things are still bad between you and somebody else. Some of us are walking around with this broken relationship with God because we don't want to go through the pain of confronting our past. We might have all kinds of reasons for that, but we don't want to go through it. We're ashamed. We'd rather forget about it. We whatever. Now we might say, well, I don't want to feel bad. God doesn't want me to feel bad. Well, no, God doesn't want you to feel bad. However, God does care about you enough to walk you through all that pain, to just give you this front row seat to the amount of betrayal that you have displayed. And it's not just to, quote, make you feel bad, although I'm sure you will feel bad. It's to mend

the relationship that is broken. God's judgment then is not just judgment for judgment's sake. It's not, he's not, you know, getting real excited, you know, like, oh, here's the good part. He's eating the popcorn. You know, that's not, it's part of a larger process. And to describe that process, I want to talk to you about Asian Longhorn beetles. I know those two things don't seem like they relate to one another. Asian Longhorn beetles. If you know anything about forestry, Most of us don't I didn't before I looked this up Asian longhorn beetles are actually a huge menace to trees every part of the life cycle of an Asian longhorn beetle Slowly tears that tree apart So the you know, it has babies in the tree the the babies eat the actual like life source of the tree They bore holes in it to get out of the tree. It's bad. Okay They can destroy a forest within five to ten years, a forest within five to ten years.

Many United States, many states in the United States have very strict protocols on how to avoid them. If you spot one, you're supposed to call your your forestry, you know, the state forestry department immediately, right? You can't do that. If you're dealing with with infested trees. So if you have a forest and you are dealing with infested trees and you are infested with an Asian longhorn beetle, that is almost a death sentence for your forest.

If you are going to actually deal with it, you have a two-step process. You have a two-step process. First, if you're going to save any of the trees, you need to locate and remove those trees. You need to identify all the infested areas And you need to remove the infestation at its source, right? So they're gonna spray chemicals, pesticides, all that. They're gonna kill the Asian Longhorn beetle.

But your second step, so the first step is to remove. So if there's trees that are too far gone, they're out, right? Just call it, right? Chop those suckers down, it's not worth it. They're dead already, they're just standing there. So the first thing you've gotta do is clear out all the dead wood, which might be the majority of your forest. But the second step is then you restore the trees that remain, and then you replant some new ones. If you do that out of order, all you are doing is giving more food to the Asian Longhorn beetle. You're saying, oh, I'll fix my infestation by planting more trees. No, you will not. The infestation will never go away. You actually make it worse. God's people were infested with a deep betrayal and a hardened heart. And in order to root it out, God needed to rip things out by the roots. And so what you see in many places where look at Hosea and Amos,

that God needed to tear down all, all the religious and cultural systems of his day. So then in Hosea 8, 13 and 9, 4, you get, as for my sacrificial offerings, they sacrifice me to eat it, but the Lord does not accept them. They shall, verse four, they shall pour, they shall not pour, drink offerings of wine to the Lord and their sacrifices shall not please him. Look at Amos 5, 21 through 23, I hate, I despise your feasts, I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings grant offerings, I will not accept them. And the piece of offerings of your fat and the animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs to the melody of your harps. I will not listen." Let me be really clear, because sometimes people read this and they're like, Oh, God hates religion. No, no. God actually prescribed all of those practices.

He went through great lengths. He even told them like what metals to use to make the harps, okay? This isn't something that God is somehow changing his mind on. He prescribed all of those practices. So what is happening? Why is he saying all of this? He's saying all this because he's telling his people, it's time to start over. We can't keep going like this. We can't, you can't keep singing songs and oppressing the poor. You can't keep making sacrifices to the Lord while you are acting in a promiscuous way.

You cannot say to the Lord, you will not provide for me and I trust you. You can't. You can't do it. And so the Lord is fed up and he's saying, because you can't do those things and you insist, you insist on all these betrayals. I'm just going to make it real easy for you. I'm going to take all of that away. All of it. And God, again, He's not doing this to just punish His people. He's doing this to replant His people. But He needed to get rid of the infestation first. He needed to uproot everything else. He's working. He's working to make the relationship with His people whole. And justice is the only way forward. Uprooting is the only way forward. It's the only way. And it is here. It's easy to misunderstand the justice because when you read the minor prophets, again, I will say the majority of what you read, if you would just flip to one of the passages in the minor prophets,

you're probably going to read, God is mad at you and justice is coming. So buckle up buttercup. It's going to be painful. That's a quick synopsis of the minor prophets. Shell, do not make that quote in the Facebook post. Don't buckle up buttercup. It does not work. OK. Judgment in the minor prophets, as you read them, and I would encourage you to do so, especially Hosea. It's a good representation of what's all over. But judgment is never, ever, ever the final word. Okay. And I will read you now we're in Malachi four one and I'll just read it for you. Malachi four one for behold. This is a classic judgment here. Behold, the day is coming burning like an oven when all the arrogant and all evil doers will be stubble. That day is coming. Uh, there's the day that is coming shall set them ablaze says the Lord of hosts so that it will lead them neither root nor branch."

Again, the Lord's using a tree metaphor, just like I did with the Asian Longhorn Beagle. God is going to burn away all of the trees that are bad. And when people quote this, when they quote Malachi 4-1, they're like, look, look at how terrible God is. Look at how mean he's being. He's not even giving people a second chance. But the idea is that it lacks context. To whom is God speaking? What has happened before? Well, never mind that. Look, no, look how mean God is. No. No, because Malachi 4:1 actually has a verse right after that. It says, Malachi 4:2 says, But for you who fear my name, the Son of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. The minor prophets are pointing forward, but not just to destruction. It's always destruction or judgment, then blessing. It's judgment, then blessing. It's not just judgment.

It's judgment that's mixed with grace. We see this in Hosea 11, 7 through 9. I'm going to want to read this in its entirety. Verse 7 is like the end of the judgment, and then 8 and following. Kind of tells you what's going on. It says, my people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, he shall not raise them up at all. So full stop on verse seven. That's the end of a long list of justice that's going to happen to God's people. But then verse eight, how can I give you up, O Ephraim? And that's a name for his people. How can I give you up? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboim? Both of these are destroyed by the destruction. It says, my heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. This is the Lord God talking. He's saying, how can I exterminate you with justice?

And effectively in verse eight, he's saying, I can't. Verse nine, I will not execute my burning anger. I will not destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst. And I will not come in wrath. So what's the deal? Is God coming in wrath or not? Well, you see a lot of this again at the end. So Malachi 4 is the last chapter in Malachi. Hosea 11 is near the end. Hosea has 14 chapters. But many times, so Joel, when you look at Joel, it has three chapters. The end of chapter 2 and end of chapter 3. It is the Lord God saying, that judgment is going to come. But when that judgment comes, I will still appeal to you to return to me, to come back, that I will relent. God says it's almost like a parent telling a child, like, look, you are at a really precarious place. I remember the day that my mom, well, that my sixth grade science teacher caught me forging my mother's signature

on some homework that I did not let my mom see because it was bad, a bad grade. I was in sixth grade and I got an F on some homework and I was supposed to have it signed by my mom. She saw it and then turned it into Mrs. Sanders. We called her Colonel Sanders. She was a good teacher, but at sixth grade I couldn't see that. And so there I am. I'm thinking I'm being real sneaky. You know, I've got my arm over the paper and I'm writing, you know, I'm signing my My mom's name just trying to go real slow. She sees it because she's an eagle-eyed teacher. She just pulls it out from underneath my thing, and the pen mark even goes. I'm like, oh, I'm busted. I'm busted. I'm busted. And I knew, and when that happened, I went home and my mom said to me, son, you are on a roller coaster. You think you're having a good time, but this ride is going to end, and you're going

to have to decide what your life's going to look like on the other end. I have not ever forgotten. It wasn't something, you know, she didn't like, she didn't even punish me that much. I mean, it's a light punishment, but I remember those words. You were on a roller coaster and that ride will end. I mean, how many mothers have actually said those exact words, right? Like, or something really close to it, right? Those are the conversations your mom has with you. They say, oh, you poor dumb boy. You think you are 10 feet tall and bulletproof, but you are not. And one day, one day, it will come for you. That is the, I think that's the privilege of being a mother, getting to say that. But when a mother says that, that is just an echo of what the Lord says to all of his people. It says, look, where your head is, destruction. In fact, I'm going to bring that destruction,

but I wanna give you some chances to turn it around. I wanna give you, I don't want to see you destroyed, so I'm gonna mix in grace with justice. I'm gonna mix in blessing with judgment. It's always the judgment then blessing of God for those who turn to him. And so all through the mind of prophets, In fact, all through every prophet, when you read them, justice is coming, but blessing and grace is mixed in. Even in the Old Testament, judgment is not the final word.

Judgment is not the final word. And so today, I wanna help you understand what biting the bullet means. Biting the bullet means repentance. And I don't know, I cannot guess what is going on in each of your hearts. I won't try. I don't need to try. But botting bullets means repentance. It means admitting and being willing to walk through the pain of the ways that you have betrayed the Lord. That's not fun. Roller coasters are more fun than that, but it is real, it is necessary. We often speak of vulnerability before the Lord. In fact, 2020, we marked out as our year of vulnerability at South Burleson. And at its core, Christianity is about being vulnerable with the Lord, accepting a relationship with Jesus in the first place, it means that we are open and vulnerable by how we've sinned against Him. But what can happen over time is that, although we have mentioned that once or twice to the Lord,

that we have betrayed Him, that we have sinned against Him, and that we need healing, and that we need to repent, it becomes, for some reason, it becomes harder to do that some days, maybe over time. Maybe we think we should have it figured out by now. I'm not really sure, but I know that even in my own walk, there are times when it is harder to admit that I have messed up. It's harder to admit that I've committed the same old sin that I've been committing for years. It's hard to admit that I've fallen for the same old trick that I have fallen for, for years. I feel dumb, so I don't wanna admit it. I don't wanna admit it to my wife. I don't wanna admit it to my kids. I don't wanna admit it to my life group. I don't wanna admit it to the people that I lead with. It's hard. I want to look like I have it all together. However, biting the bullet means that we admit that in our hearts we have said to the Lord,

you will not provide, or you are not powerful enough, or you are not real enough, or you're not present. Or sometimes we admit, God, you have cheated me out of a better life. You've cheated me out of something that other people have. And so for our time of invitation or time of response, I just really want to be plain and simple about it. I want to challenge you to repent right there in your seat. You want some help repenting? I'm up here. We'll sing. But as we do, I want you to consider what the Lord has asked you to stop doing or start doing and how you haven't done it. and to really face that music, to really not just pull back the curtain in your own life, but to be able to kind of look at it and begin to talk to the Lord about it. Yeah, the Lord wants to walk you through it, and it won't be fun, that roller coaster. At the end of the roller coaster won't be fun,

but it's something that is necessary. And the joy on the other side, a right relationship with the Lord is worth it. And so today, as we say, consider what you might repent of. Consider being honest with the Lord this morning together as a church body. Let me pray for us. Jesus, we love you. We thank you for all the ways that you reach out to us in love and grace and mercy. I pray that you would help us to admit it, to walk in humility before you and just say, yeah, I've betrayed you, yes. I've done it. I've said it. I've thought it. I've acted in it. And I'm sorry. Show me where I went wrong so that our relationship can be met. Show me how to repent. That's your name that we pray. Amen. Thank you guys for singing.

When fears are stilled, when striving sees My Comforter, My All-in-all Here in the love of Christ I stand In Christ alone, who took on flesh Fullness of God and helpless faith, This gift of love and righteousness Scorned by the one He came to save, Till on that cross as Jesus died, The wrath of God was satisfied, for every sin on Him was laid Here in the death of Christ, I live His body lay Light of the world by darkness slain Then bursting forth in glorious day Up from the grave he rose again And as he stands in victory Since curse has lost its grip on me For I am his and he is mine Bogged with the precious blood of grass No guilt in life, no fear in death This is the power of Christ in me From life's first cry to final breath Jesus commands my destiny No power of hell, no scheme of man Can ever pluck me from his hand Till he returns or calls me home Here in the power of Christ I'll stand

Here in the power of Christ I'll stand Lord Jesus, we thank you God that you have come. We thank you that we can trust in you alone. Lord, we thank you for your grace, that your wrath was satisfied and not poured out upon us like we deserve. Father, I pray that our journey with you would begin always with repentance, Lord. And we wouldn't have this idea of forgiveness without repentance. We love you. We thank you for what you've done and what you're going to do in our lives. In Jesus name.