2 Samuel 1:17-27

We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel, and we have extra copies.

If you didn't bring one and you'd like one to follow along, just raise your hand up really high and make sure somebody's one over that way.

Thank you so much.

And uh anybody else need a copy?

Uh we are in 2 Samuel.

We're crawling our study of 2 Samuel, the story of unlikely redemption, because when we consider, even for the briefest of moments, uh, that God has chosen and called us, it just blows our mind.

And we look at these stories here, these 3,000-year-old events, uh, and it just, again, it seems unlikely in so many ways that God would do such a thing.

But it is God's word to us, and he's reminding us uh that he is uh not only a friend of sinners, but he saves sinners.

And he came for us.

He brought rescue and redemption for the likes of us.

And so we're blown away as we read some of this old uh text, this ancient text, and uh it's God's word to us.

It's it's uh unique in its source, timeless in its truth, broad in its reach, and transforming in its power.

So we give attention to the scriptures each and every Sunday.

So we'll be in chapter one, finishing the last uh half of it.

Uh you'll remember, I hope some of you will anyway, that uh uh the events leading up to what we're about to read are that uh uh David has been on the run.

King Saul has wanted to kill him for a number of years, has attempted to eleven times.

Uh David had a couple of opportunities to uh actually free himself by killing King Saul.

In 1 Samuel chapters 24 and 26, we read about that, but he did not because Saul, according to David, was the Lord's anointed, and David was committed to God's will, God's ways, God's timing in his life.

1 Samuel 24 · chapter mention

And so he did not do that.

Um so we find as we open up 2 Samuel, it's another story, the second story actually, of the death of Saul and Jonathan.

Uh and uh it was told to us once in chapter 31 of 1 Samuel, and then a second time it's told to us in the first half of chapter 1 of 2 Samuel, told by an Amalekite man who claims to have been on the ground when all of that happened.

His story seems a little bit questionable.

Uh and David and his men, he might have thought that David would rejoice that the news of the death of Saul and the presenting of the crown, the presenting of the armband, that that would cause David to just start a big party and rejoice, because now David was gonna be king, everybody knew Samuel the prophet had anointed David to be the next king, and surely this is good news.

But this is what happens.

He laments, he weeps, he wails.

And we saw a little bit of that beginning in our last study, but we're gonna pick it up right uh in verse 17 where it says, David chanted with his lament over Saul and Jonathan his son.

That's what the lament was about, the loss of Saul and Jonathan.

And he told them to teach the sons of Judah the song of the bow.

We don't know what that was.

It might have been a tune that David had written.

It might have been a familiar tune that everybody uh knew, but then he put these new words to it, this lament that he's writing.

Uh behold, it is written in the book of Jashar.

I love stuff like this because as far as I know, we don't know where the book of Jashar is.

It's mentioned one other time in the Old Testament in Joshua chapter 10, but there's no extant copy or manuscript copies of the book of Jashar.

Joshua 10 · chapter mention

I can't wait till somebody digging around in the dirt over there finds one of those.

I mean, the book of Jashar.

Couldn't that be an awesome find?

What was the book of Jashar?

I haven't got a clue.

But evidently this lament was put into it, and David's first instruction, or at least close to his first instruction, as the de facto king of Judah right now, is that this song would be taught to the sons of Judah, and that they would remember what happened here.

And so he goes into the words, the narrator does, and he's got the lyric to the song.

It begins like this, verse 19.

Your beauty, I think some of your translations will say, your glory.

It's your beauty, O Israel, is slain on your high places.

How the mighty have fallen.

That will be said three times, how the mighty have fallen.

It's a device in ancient Hebrew literature called an inclusio.

So what happens is you see it three times in this lament, once at the beginning, once in the middle, once toward the end.

And that just simply means it's a bracket.

It's like a, it's like a, it's keep these thoughts all together.

How the mighty have fallen, how the mighty have fallen, how the mighty have fallen.

Three times.

Okay?

Very important, as it's uh by repetition given to us, that Israel glory is slain on the high places.

That's the place that you should be able to defend Israel's glory.

So you look at this ancient Hebrew poetry, you see these visual images, and they're not throwaways.

This is a thoughtful lament.

High places were the place they should have been able to protect.

They had the best shot at protecting themselves up high.

They could see the enemy coming, they could see what the enemy was armed with, they could throw stuff down on the enemy.

And so he's lamenting, and it's it's it's it's one of those times where what should have gone one way did not go one way.

They were in the high place, they should have been able to defend themselves, but the mighty have fallen.

He says, Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised exult.

You see, Gath and Ashkelon, two cities of the five major Philistine cities of the day, really representing the whole nation.

David lamenting the fact that the women, especially of the Philistines, would be dancing and singing at the news that Saul and Jonathan are dead, much like the Israelite women had rejoiced when David came back from killing Goliath.

And they sang the women did of Israel.

They sang that Saul had killed his thousands, but David is ten thousands.

And so all I'm saying is a cultural habit to rejoice in victory over those that you have been up against in war.

And so David's lament is he doesn't want that to happen.

He doesn't want the name of Saul, the name of Jonathan, and ultimately the name of Yahweh to be exalted over by the uncircumcised Philistines, the one that worshiped Dagon, the ones that denied Yahweh, the ones that didn't recognize Yahweh at all.

O mountains of Gilboa, and that's where the battle was, that Saul and Jonathan were a part of, where they were slain.

O mountains of Gilboah, and if you've been to Israel, you know that's not just one mountain, it's kind of a long range.

Let not dew or rain be on you, nor fields of offerings.

In other words, be dry.

Be non-productive, Gilboah.

For there the shield of the mighty was defiled, the shield of Saul, not anointed with oil.

Look at the poet here.

Drawing creation to join him in his lament.

Again, these are not throwaway images.

These are not throwaway, it's not filler.

All creation groans and moans over this loss.

Yahweh, who created Mount Gilboa.

His dignity, his name.

We're lamenting over the fact that that has been besmirched by this loss.

And so even creation should be barren and show that this is wrong.

There's something wrong about this.

And he's an amazing poet, amazing use of images to convey this.

From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan did not turn back, and the sword of Saul did not return empty.

Notice how much respect he's paying to Saul, the guy that tried to kill him eleven times.

Isn't that unusual?

And Jonathan, his best friend, David's very best friend.

We'll look at that a little bit more a little bit later.

But he's so torn up, his heart's so shredded that in this moment, not only does he give, not only does he mourn and grieve his best friend, but he even shows honor to the one who would be his enemy, the one who would have killed David.

And he even honors Saul in Saul's death and says that they didn't go down easy.

They went down fighting.

Saul and Jonathan beloved and pleasant in their life.

Now he talks about the relationship of King Saul and his son Jonathan, who was David's best friend.

Saul and Jonathan beloved and pleasant in their life.

And in their death, they were not parted.

They were together.

In other words, they were swifter than eagles, beautiful image.

They were stronger than lions.

O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you luxuriously in scarlet, who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.

Evidently, their economy had flourished a bit under Saul, even though Saul himself had turned his back on God.

And so he's he's he's he's saying, we should weep over this national loss.

How the mighty have fallen in the midst of battle.

One more time.

It's just it's almost like it just, he can't stop saying that.

It's so wrong, it's so upside down.

How the mighty have fallen.

And he's just grieving and he's he's this through this lament.

Jonathan is slain on your high places, and it it really starts to come home in a very personal way, beginning now, and that's kind of a pivot phrase right there, isn't it?

Because he's talking about Saul and Jonathan, but now he's going to use the first person pronoun, I.

I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan.

You have been very pleasant to me.

Your love to me was more wonderful than the love of women.

How the mighty have fallen and the weapons of war perished.

And that's how this lament closes.

And it's really powerful, very moving.

And I think it's interesting when we look at our Bibles that we find something like that preserved for so long for us, describing events that happened 3,000 years ago.

A song of lament that doesn't even mention God.

Did you notice that?

A song of lament that the God of the Word decided would remain in the Word of God.

So you and I could know that it's legitimately okay for us to lament certain things in life.

What makes you what makes you cry?

What is so gut-wrenching?

What is it that breaks your heart?

Sadness over what has been?

Sadness over what might have been?

Sadness over what you think will likely never be.

What makes you lament?

What makes you grieve right now?

Sadness over the loss of someone you loved?

Whether because of war or or aging, like some of us have.

My father-in-law, just four or five weeks ago here, went home to be with the Lord.

I grieve, I mourn, I lament, but not without hope.

What makes you sad and what makes you weep and lament?

Injustice, the scourge of human trafficking.

Close to 30 million people caught up in human trafficking in our world.

That should break our hearts.

That should rip us open.

That should draw tears from us.

And yet we're so easily distracted by things that are just inconveniences.

And there's such great sorrow and so many things that are so intense.

Sadness over the scandal of racism that keeps rearing its ugly head in our world, or religious persecution.

And the sorrow over the acrimony in our culture.

And the part and the role that some of us are playing in that.

You know, perpetuating that.

Sadness over our sin.

That should probably have been on the top of the list, shouldn't it?

Because what's wrong with the world?

G.K.

Chesterton said it so easily, so quickly, succinctly.

I am.

That's what's wrong with the world.

I am.

My sin.

The darkness in my heart.

My selfishness.

Yeah.

True.

I think the one thing we can take from this is surely, the Bible is showing us there are times when it's proper to grieve and lament.

And some of you are thinking, well, that's stating the obvious.

And that's the greatest thing about my job.

I get to state the obvious.

And it's because I keep forgetting the obvious.

And I need to be reminded over and over again of things that are obvious to other people.

But that I just keep forgetting.

That it's really okay for God's people to grieve and lament from time to time.

The Song of the Beau, the book of Jeshar, we don't know what they are, but here's what we do know about our Bibles.

Right dead set in the middle of our Bibles is a book called The Psalms.

Do you know that of the 150 ancient songs in the book of Psalms, about half of them written by King David, this guy that wrote this lament as well?

About a third of those Psalms are songs of lament.

Most of the songs of lament in the book of Psalms end with some kind of statement about confidence in God, which is wonderful.

But some of them just leave it like this one did too.

Just leave it as we are brokenhearted.

But one of the beautiful Psalms, Psalm 34, says this the Lord draws near to the brokenhearted, and he saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Your broken heart, my shredded heart, from time to time, whatever we're going through, whatever we're lamenting, is like a magnet to the God of the universe.

He draws near to the brokenhearted.

He saves those who are crushed in spirit.

You know why?

They can't save themselves.

They've been crushed.

And we need him to do that.

We need his act of sovereign grace, his initiation in our lives, or his intervention, rather, in our lives.

The form of lament that we find in the pages of the Bible, though, is usually more than a spontaneous outburst or a release of emotions just for the sake of releasing emotions.

This one is a good example of that.

The laments that we find in ancient Hebrew poetry involve both the mind and the heart.

The emotions are given their legitimate place, but the mind is involved also.

Why?

How do I know that?

Well, look at the imagery.

Look how carefully it was selected.

The high places as the picture.

What an irony that the mighty have fallen on the high places.

That they didn't go down, uh, they didn't just fall down, they didn't just cowardly surrender, they actually went down swinging.

And the honor, both the honor and the horrors of war are represented in this lament.

And when one of those is missing, man, there's just no way that war goes well.

It either gets reduced to sentimentalism or meanness.

And war should never be either one of those only.

Um or either one of those at all.

The Psalms, so beautiful, so powerful.

Athanasius said, most scriptures speak to us, the Psalms speak for us.

I love that about David, I love that about this lament here as well, even though it's not in the book of Psalms.

The Psalms help us in at least five ways.

These expressions, these kinds of ancient songs of lament, they inform our mind, express our emotions.

They give us words to be able to speak about the way we feel.

Every human emotion is on display in the Psalms.

They direct the will, they tell us what to do with what we're thinking and feeling, and direct our wills to have confidence in God.

They stimulate the imagination, and they, most importantly, inspire us to a place of worship.

David, the sweet psalmist of Israel, knew there were times when it would be proper to grieve and lament, and many of his songs gave voice to the broken heart of a nation, as well as the broken heart of individuals himself and others that he taught to sing.

The trouble with stealing oneself, Frederick Bakner, a more modern-day poet, says, is if you're trying to resist this, if you're trying to say, no, Christians, Bible-believing Christians, should not grieve, should not lament, where's your victor, all that stuff, if you're saying that's out of bounds, I gotta go with Beakner on this, and I gotta go with David on this as well.

The trouble with stealing yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from.

You can survive on your own.

You can grow strong on your own, you can prevail on your own, but you cannot become human on your own.

I think he's right there.

Even Jesus wept.

The prophet Isaiah predicted that Messiah would be a man of sorrows.

Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus, we're told in the shortest verse in the Bible, he wept.

And he knew what he was going to do.

He knew he was gonna raise him from the dead.

But Jesus, looking at the dead, Lazarus and the grieving souls around him, the sisters, the family, the village folk that were his neighbors, all of that, he knew there was just something so wrong.

It's not the way it's supposed to be, and so he shows his power to raise the dead, as he will show it ultimately in his own resurrection, just a few days after that time with Lazarus.

Jesus weeps as he rides into Jerusalem to lay down his life on the cross for our sin.

And because of this, we can always, we can know that we can always turn to Christ with our tears.

We can always turn to him with our grieving, with our mourning, whatever it may be that we lament.

Whether that's the loss of human life, taken in war, domestic violence, succumbing to sickness, whatever it might be, not given the opportunity to be born, or at the other end of life, not given the opportunity to experience a natural death.

This is why we grieve, even for those who consider themselves enemies of our God.

Even for those who don't look like us, think like us, live like us.

We grieve for the souls of those who offend us.

We grieve for those who treat us poorly.

We grieve for those we disagree with on serious issues, for those who simply may not like us, who are acrimonious towards our particular biblical worldview.

We grieve that the world is this way, and that souls have been deceived, and that people have been turned away from worshiping their God and their creator.

We mourn the loss of every human life because God is the source of life.

And life with God is what we were all designed for, not life apart from God.

Andrew Jukes was an English theologian.

He was known to have influenced the missionary James Hudson Taylor.

Not James Taylor, you've got a friend, but James Hudson Taylor, the missionary.

And Jukes writes this, he says, I can tell you for an eternal truth that troubled souls are always safe.

It is the untroubled that are in danger.

Trouble in itself is always a claim on love, and God is love.

He must deny himself if he does not come to the help of the helpless.

It is the prisoners and the blind, the leper, the possessed, the hungry, the tempest-tossed who are his special care.

Therefore, if you are lost and sick and bound, you are just in the place where he can meet you.

Blessed are the mourners.

They shall be comforted.

Yeah, there are times when it's proper to grieve and to lament.

And as we grieve and lament, we are comforted to know that the God who knows our sorrows intimately bids us draw near to him.

The ancient Jews used to have these things called tear jars.

I bought one when I was in Israel once for Kim.

It was in an archaeological sort of an artifact store, and it was dated to the first century, and it was found in Bethlehem and Odig.

I have no idea whose it was.

I just know that was amazing to me.

And that they symbolically that they would save their tears because in their understanding of Yahweh, they understood that Yahweh saved every tear they shed.

And he was that acquainted with their sorrows.

Isn't that amazing to think about?

How beautiful the symbol of that is, but I want you to know it points to a reality.

That the God who is, the God who really exists, who's revealing himself in Scripture, not only does he number all the hairs on your head, like Jesus said, but he also knows about every tear you shed and every tear that I shed.

And he draws near to your broken heart and to my broken heart.

Now, why do you think that is?

And I love the way Spurgeon put this.

It's is it not sweet to believe that our tears are understood even when the words fail?

Let us learn to think of tears as liquid prayers.

Yeah.

Sometimes do you ever just in prayer fall before Him?

And you run out of words, you got nothing.

And you just groan or you just weep as the apologies.

Apostle Paul said, sometimes we just groan.

And the Spirit gives utterance to our what we're feeling, what we're going through, and the Lord understands and knows what's going on.

Third thing, or the second thing rather, I want to highlight from this passage is you noticed, didn't you, that David said, teach this song to the sons of Judah.

Put it in this, and they end up putting it in the book of Jeshar.

That's because singing is one of the best ways to remember, to teach, to learn, to express, and to worship.

It's how we remember really well.

A lot of us can remember stuff from songs that we don't remember other ways, you know.

If we attach a melody to it, or if we attach something to it, it seems like by association we can remember things.

When my dad, my father-in-law, was uh in the long goodbye of his Alzheimer's, I love to watch, when we could go visit him, I love to watch the lady from the Baptist church come and play the organ.

And she played the old hymns.

And he seemed to brighten up a little when he heard that onward Christian soul.

Yeah.

It just seemed to bring him back a little bit.

And so we sing songs from the 16th century, don't we?

From people like Martin Luther, a mighty fortress is our God.

And we remember that God just doesn't exist.

There are certain things that are really true about him.

He's a fortress.

And I need a fortress sometimes, a place to hide.

A strong and mighty tower that he is.

And we sing songs from the 18th century, like Amazing Grace by the former slave ship captain John Newton.

We sing songs from the 19th century, a hymn by the Anglican Bishop of Calcutta, Reginald Heber.

You sing it all the time.

It acknowledges God in all of his otherness as we sing holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.

Early in the morning, our song shall rise to thee.

The 8:30 service sings that a little more boldly than you guys do.

But nonetheless, it's true.

That's who our God is.

And every waking hour, we want to draw before him and just be in his presence.

And in his presence is fullness of joy, in spite of the hurricane and the tornado that's going on around us.

And in his presence is the peace that we so desperately need.

And in his presence is the belonging that we've been longing for.

Because we belong to him.

See?

And that is a first and utmost priority for us to remember.

I want to talk about belonging a little bit because we would do well to recover the beauty of fidelity and friendship as we see her between Jonathan and David.

We must not misinterpret what we read here at the end of this lament about the depths of their friendship through our postmodern lens.

Everything in their world was not about sexuality, even if it often appears to be that way in our own time.

I believe we've done two things wrong in our own time that affect the way we read texts like this.

We've idolized sexuality, and at the same time, we have debased friendship.

And you can see how that can undercut and twist the way we might read this, right?

We have such a low view of friendship and such a high view of sexuality that we read a passage like this and we go, oh, that seems to be.

What's he saying about that, you know?

And it's not, this is not a teach, this is not a passage that teaches about human sexuality.

Make no mistake, the Bible does speak about human sexuality.

God created it.

It's his design.

Okay?

But this isn't that passage.

That's not what this passage is about.

But don't please don't miss what this passage is about.

Because we would do so well to recover the beauty of fidelity in friendship.

Loneliness is an epidemic in our culture.

We have more ways of being connected than ever before.

Some of you are never offline.

Some of you are checking your devices over and over and over and over again, and yet you feel so lonely.

Your heart is despairing over the lonely.

Some people are so excited to get 5,000 followers, but they won't work hard at five friendships.

We do that to our own peril, you see.

Because God created us in his image.

And in God's image, what you have is this triune God who is in perfect loving relationship, Father, Son, and Spirit.

And so he creates us with a capacity for relationship.

And what do we do with it?

We diminish friendship.

And this, I think, is a great and beautiful example of friendship that is about fidelity.

It is Jonathan himself who in 1 Samuel 23, 17, says to David, You will be king over Israel.

I will be second to you.

Now, if that does not sound upside down to you in our day and time, you're not thinking right.

Nobody in our day and time would tell you to think second.

Everyone in our day and time would tell you the most three most important people on the planet are you and you and you.

Me, myself, and I.

Here's Jonathan, who I think is just such a great example of fidelity in friendship.

And David recognizes that, and that's why it gets so personal at the end, and that's why he says, I lament the loss of my very best friend.

And from all of the earthly loves I've seen, man, the relationship that he and I have had, it's been so deep, so rich.

It surpasses even whatever I might think of relationships that women have with each other or men have with women or whatever.

This is that deep bond of brotherhood that he had with Jonathan.

And it's beautiful.

And if we miss that, I think we we unfortunately are missing out on a great thing the Bible teaches.

Other generations did not diminish friendship like we have done in our own day and time.

And they also did not exalt sexuality like we have in our own day and time.

The Apostle Paul speaks on a similar vein and says, be devoted to one another in brotherly love, honor one another above yourselves.

You know, that's exactly what Jonathan did.

You will be king and not me.

And yet Jonathan was the bloodline guy.

He was the guy that was supposed to be next when Saul died.

No, David, you, my brother.

Actually, his brother-in-law, literally, you, my brother-in-law, will be king, and I will be second to you.

That's an amazing kind of friend, amazing kind of fidelity.

We long to belong, all of us do.

And I think we're missing it by diminishing friendship as we have.

And I think we need to get back to rediscovering.

And let the church be a place where the relationships that we have with one another are so deep and so beautiful and so healthy that no one in this room, no one in this fellowship has this sense of disconnectedness or this sense of loneliness that haunts so many people in our world who are, again, so connected, more connected than ever, but more lonely than ever as well.

Let's let the love of God flow between the brothers and sisters of the body of Christ, that they might see they belong.

When you belong to God, when you belong to Christ Jesus, you belong to his body as well, and you're never alone again.

I love the way the Heidelberg Catechism puts this.

What a beautiful thing to say.

You know, so contrary again to our own day and time, where you're being told you do belong to you.

And no, the scriptures will say no.

In the beginning, God created.

It's really the most offensive verse in the whole Bible if you think you belong to you.

But in the beginning, God created.

And that makes me a creature who's created by God.

And my identity is a gift given to me.

It's not something I have to struggle to find.

With all the voices that are shouting at me, be this, be this, be this.

No, I belong to him.

I'm a son of the king of the universe.

It's glorious, it's wonderful, it causes me to rest in his sovereignty.

It causes me to believe that he has my future in his hands.

And that there's meaning, real meaning, real purpose in my life, because I can bring glory to his name by living in loving obedience to him, following Jesus.

The love of God in belonging to God is on full display here.

And this is my last point that the love of God for you in Christ is the one love from which you can never be separated.

Here is this lament, David.

It's honest, it's real.

Saul has fallen, Jonathan has fallen, the armories of Israel have fallen, and how gut-wrenching that was for David, and in his own day and time, how immediate that's there.

It's right there.

Okay?

But here's what's a great across the board promise from Scripture: that the love of God for you in Christ is the one love from which you can never be separated.

Christ, the one who's greater than Saul, Christ, the one who's greater than Jonathan, Christ, the one who's greater than David.

You cannot be separated from his love.

The Apostle Paul uh said it just so clearly, and you know the verse, the uh the verses from uh Romans 8.

Let's read them aloud together, would you?

For I neither death nor life, the angels or demons, neither the present or the future, or any hours, neither life or death, or anything else and all great who be able to separate us from the love of God.

Yes, Christ Jesus our Lord.

Somebody say amen.

Yeah.

Never again are you separated from the love of God.

You belong to Christ.

You're not struggling to find yourself.

You belong to Christ.

Okay?

Be his.

Walk in that freedom, rest in that love.

That's his love for you.

No matter who you are, you can receive this.

This is a universal offer, the gospel.

But you must respond.

You must repent from your sin.

You must turn to him as Lord and Savior and trust him.

But oh, why would you wait?

Why wouldn't you want to do that?

Look what's on offer.

The kind of love you've been looking for, the kind of belonging you've been looking for all your life is there.

Only love of the immutable can bring tranquility, Keller says in making sense of God.

Only the unconditional love of God will do.

The immutable, for those of you that are going, what's that way?

It means the unchangeableness of God.

Only the love of the immutable, the God who never changes, who's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The God whose love is constant for you.

The God whose love you can't earn, so guess what?

You can't lose it either.

You didn't earn it in the first place, you can't lose it.

Some of you beat yourself up all the time because you fall to this temptation or that sin or whatever it might be, and you think, oh, God can't love me now.

I got news for you.

He knows what a wretch you are.

He knows what a wretch I am already.

You know?

And yet he died for sinners, not perfect people.

He loves sinners, not perfect people.

And he loves me and he loves you, and I'm so glad to be able to rest in his love.

Eastanley Jones, uh 20th century Methodist Christian missionary to India, uh, said the love of God invades me, the peace of God pervades me, the will of God persuades me, and I am holy his.

Folks, that's belonging.

That's a beautiful belonging.

Let's pray.

Thank you, Lord, for your great love for us, expressed so beautifully ultimately in the person and work of Christ.

On the cross when he died for us, the empty tomb when he rose again, the beautiful promises of his return to set everything right, to raise all of those who've gone before us, to bring them with him.

We look forward to what you have planned for us and pray that you would give us the courage and the faith to, in the meantime, live for your glory and for the good of our neighbors, that the gospel might be heard in our words and seen in our lives.

May the good seed of God's word find fertile soil in our hearts.

May it take root and bear fruit.

And may the Holy Spirit use our study of the scriptures today to transform our minds and hearts, to make us more like Jesus, in whose name we pray.

Amen and amen.