The Lord is...

Psalm sixteen, a micdom of David.

Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.

I say to the Lord, You are my Lord.

I have no good apart from you.

As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.

The sorrows of those who run after another God shall multiply.

Their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips.

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup.

You hold my lot.

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.

Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

I bless the Lord who gives me counsel.

In the night also my heart instructs me.

I have set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.

Therefore, my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices.

My flesh also dwells secure.

For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.

You make known to me the path of life.

In your presence there is fullness of joy.

At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

This is the word of the Lord.

Good morning, church family.

If you join me as we pray for the service this morning, Father God.

Yahweh, the great I am, the one who was there before, during and after.

Lord, I pray that you would remind us that you are enough, that you are all sufficient, that you provide everything that we need.

Lord, I confess that times that I've sought the comfort and pleasures of this world, Lord, and they've left me empty.

Lord, I pray for the peace that you alone provide, the protection that you alone provide, the comfort that you give in the middle of the night when we seem alone.

We'd be reminded that you are there with us.

Holy Spirit, open our eyes this morning to understand and receive the truth of your word.

Help us to understand and know that you are enough in all things as we seek the world that cannot provide what you provide.

Lord, we praise you for this time.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Good morning.

You guys can be seated.

My name is Robert.

I'm one of the pastors here, and it is a pleasure to be with you this morning as we uh gather, as we do weekly, as the body of Christ here at Heartland.

As you heard, we're in Psalm 16.

If you haven't already turned there, I'd invite you to turn your copy of Scripture to the book of Psalms in chapter 16.

And as we begin, I just want to say how beautiful it is that we have scripture to interpret scripture, that we have Old Testament prophecies fulfilled in New Testament texts.

And what a privilege it is for us as sinful, finite human beings, that we have access to God's revealed word in our language at our fingertips at all times.

And there is 2,000 years of church history that points to both the sufficiency of God's word, but also the sufficiency of Christ.

And this morning we get to see that.

And I want to highlight that from the beginning because as we read this passage, I want to point out a couple of things from you.

We can read Peter's sermon in Acts 2, and see that Peter in Acts 2 pointed to Psalm 16.

We can also read about Paul in in um Acts 13 when he's in Antioch in Pisidia, and he too references Psalm 16 to make an application of Jesus the Christ.

Both Peter and Saul, or both Peter and Paul, excuse me, see David's language in verse 10 and 11.

We're going to get there at the end of the sermon this morning.

They see the language in verse 10 and 11 as the promise of the resurrection of Christ the Son.

And today, nearly 2,000 years after Peter's sermon, and 2,000 years after Paul's words in Antioch, and 3,000 years after the text was written, we read it and we can draw the very same application that has been made for 20 centuries, and that is that the Lord is enough.

We live in a fallen and difficult world.

That is no secret.

The earthly protection that we often rely on proves to be weak.

The earthly portion that we chase after.

And day in and day out, what we often do is instead of finding satisfaction in God alone alone, we find satisfaction in all sorts of things other than Him.

We as Christians, speak to Christians for a minute, often are quick to point to the culture and say, they need to find satisfaction in Christ.

And in doing so, what we do is we expect lost people to act like found people.

All the while we fail to wake up and look into the mirror and how day in and day out that we ourselves, we seek our own protection, we seek our own portion, we seek our own comfort.

And ultimately, what that leads us to do is seek our own promise.

We should be most primarily concerned about the areas where we fall short and less primarily concerned about the areas where the world falls short.

You see, the lost person doesn't need some sort of ethical correction from us, they need the gospel message.

So let me speak to the person in the room who's not a follower of Christ for a second.

If you are not a follower of Christ, and the only thing a person who follows Jesus, a Christian, has ever spoken to you or offered to you is ethical correction, I am sorry.

I am sorry.

Jesus is what you need, not to be corrected.

And you, a believer, we don't need to compare our lifestyle to the lifestyle of the unredeemed.

What we see in Psalm 16 is that we need to live in satisfaction of the Lord alone and nothing else.

And as we begin deep down, I want you to process a question for me.

I want you in your mind right now and in your heart and in your soul to answer the following question: Do you truly find satisfaction in the Lord alone?

There's not a single person under the sound of my voice right now that does that to perfection.

The Lord your God is your goal.

Jesus Christ is your rescuer.

The Holy Spirit is the one who transforms you.

And my prayer today as we dive into the text is that we would not only see God's glory, we would see that most certainly, but that we not only just see it, but that we would find satisfaction in our lives with it that is so palpable, that is so palpable that we can taste it and that we can feel it and that we can see it as we see in his word this morning that the Lord is our protection, the Lord is our portion, the Lord is our peace, and the Lord is our promise.

So let's dive in with the Lord as our protection.

We see this in verses one through four.

And when we think protection, I don't know about you, for but for me, often my mind immediately goes to I need to be protected from some sort of external force that seeks to find harm in me.

Right?

I need to protect myself or my family from something on the outside that is going to harm me.

The Lord certainly provides that protection, but he doesn't just provide protection from outside forces.

His protection is from those things, but most certainly and most foundationally, his protection is from ourselves.

The Lord protects us from ourselves.

In a similar attitude of that of Adam and Eve in the garden, we think we often have this thing that is life figured out.

But the reality is that we are truly ignorant to eternal things.

We day in and day out act just like Adam and Eve, in that we think we know better than God.

We act just like him, in that we think we know better than God.

You act that way, I act that way.

Many of you like me, as I prepped this sermon this week, and that hit me, that flooded into me that idea and that thought and that reality that we see in the text, and my mind went to, no, no, no, no, no, not me.

I don't do that.

But at the same time, I live with an unsettled or even bitter spirit towards the things that do not go my way.

Don't hear me discounting biblical laments, but our ongoing posture should not simply always be.

Why did it have to happen this way, God?

It would have been better for it to happen this way.

I'm gonna go off my notes for a second.

Even in the first song this morning, I was nearly in tears on the front row because I was singing that my battle belongs to the Lord with my lips.

That was what I was proclaiming with my lips, but in my mind, I was thinking about things that man, if you would have done this different, maybe it would have gone better.

Or why isn't this going to the way the plan that I thought it would go to?

So I'm proclaiming a truth with my lips, and in my mind, I am still relying on myself.

I'm proclaiming that the battle belongs to the Lord, but in my mind, I'm telling myself, you've got to figure it out, Robert.

The battle belongs to the Lord.

When we find our satisfaction and our protection and anything other than Him, we proclaim that we know better than He does.

Look with me at verse 3 for a second.

It says, The saints in the lands, they are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight.

David writes this three millennium ago.

Think about that for a second.

Three millennium ago, and he understands and verbalizes the necessity and the value of God's people being with God's people.

He was making the statement before Christ died and established his church.

As we've seen multiple times as we worked our way through the Psalms, Israel was God's covenant people through the old covenant at the time the psalm was written.

And today, by the grace of God alone, God's covenant people are the church through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

And from eternity past, the presence of God's people in the life of God's people has been a precious blessing from the Lord.

And it has also been a sign of his protection.

Yet the first sign of disagreement or when sin is confronted, people often just say, peace out to the local church, taking their problems to the next local church, maybe even abandoning the local church altogether.

We are quick to point out the sins of others, but often we fail to see our own sins.

And what's the most devastating thing about this for me is not just that people leave one church and go to the next church, is that people have a low, low, low view of the local church.

And they're unable to understand this concept of the universal church, which is all believers for all times, and the local church, and that the that God's word speaks to the importance of both.

You can't hate the local church and love Jesus.

You just can't.

You can't love Jesus and bounce from one local church to the next like a bouncy ball.

That communicates that you desire to have all of your preferences fancied and that you desire to be catered, catered to, but you do not desire the protection of God through his local church.

And potentially worse, that may even communicate you do not desire the Lord at all.

I want to point out five ways that I believe that we see the covenant body of Christ that is the local church be an expression of God's protection in our life.

Here are the five.

The first one, the fellowship within the body of Christ is for our protection.

The second one, the elders who handle the word and give an account for your soul are for your protection or our protection.

The third one, the act of killing sin together through accountability and other means is for our protection.

The fourth one, the loving rebuke of unrepentant sin is for our protection.

The fifth one, the care and love in the midst of suffering and difficulty and grief is for our protection.

Relationships with God's people, even the ones that are difficult, even the conversations that are difficult, we must see and understand for what they really are: an expression of God's grace and mercy on your life.

See, the relationship that we have with other saints, it should be our delight, because they are for our good.

May we be a people here at Heartland that love the good gift that He has given to us for our protection, and that is His church.

There will be people along the way, most certainly.

I don't need fellowship, I don't need the local church.

I simply need God.

Brothers and sisters, what we see most certainly in the New Testament, but even in David's words here in Psalm 16, to need God is to need the church.

Right?

To need God is to need the church and the fellowship of the saints.

Look with me in verse 4.

This is the inverse.

To run from the Lord is to run to sorrow.

Again, another expression of the Lord's protection being all-sustaining.

David did not even want to speak of the empty promises of other gods.

He didn't even want to speak of them.

I will not entertain their ways, nor will I even put their names on my lips, is what he says.

Because he knew what presented itself as a faithful protector would only end up being lifeless misery.

There's a difference in opinion on what he means when he says drink offerings.

Some speak to it being the shed blood of the innocent, others speak to it being the reference to actual blood from pagan sacrifices.

Regardless of that interpretation, the interpretive application is the same.

And that is that David's monotheistic view of Yahweh, and we'll get to that in a second.

David's monotheistic view that Yahweh alone was God.

Yahweh is the only God that would flow from his actions.

Yahweh is the only God that would flow from his lips.

Yahweh is the only God that would provide him ultimate protection.

So we have to ask the question: how do I live under the Lord's protection?

How do I live under the Lord's protection?

Some of you very well may be looking to other gods.

And I'm not saying you're praying to a golden statue in your living room when you get home.

If you are, we should have a conversation.

But I'm not saying that's necessarily the case.

But maybe your god of sports or politics or relationships or something else.

For those of you who say that's not me, first of all, maybe it is you and you just don't see it.

If someone else is telling you it's you, it's probably you.

But further, I want to present to you that you may not be looking to other gods for protection, but you very well may be overlooking the protection of Yahweh that is right in front of you, and that is his church.

You should be covenanted to a body of Christ.

We see that all throughout the New Testament.

The most practical way for you to live in his protection in the post-life, death, and resurrection of Jesus world that we live is to covenant yourself to the local church that preaches the word and that practices the ordinance.

In hard times, we are to lean on God's people, not away from God's people.

And that is given to us for our protection.

So the Lord is our protection.

We also see in the next section, verses five and six, that the Lord is our portion.

I made mention to the fact that our relationship with the church is covenantal under the new covenant of the blood of Jesus Christ.

David uses covenantal language here.

Looking at the original language of Psalm 16, the Lord is referred to as Yahweh multiple times.

Yahweh is a covenantal name for God.

So verse 2, if you look at the original language for the word God, it says, I say to Yahweh, you are a dome.

Right?

I say to Yahweh, you are a dome.

You are the covenant creating and keeping God, and you are my God.

That's what David is saying.

Verse 5, Yahweh is my chosen portion.

The covenant creating and keeping God is my portion.

So David is both praising him for being God and also praising him for his provision.

Want to make note of something that I found quite interesting as I read this text multiple times this week.

He goes straight from the sustenance of Yahweh after what he just speaks to in the verse before, the insufficiency of idols.

He goes straight to the sustenance of Yahweh, the God, from talking about the insufficiency of idols.

The idols are that are before me are not enough.

Lord, you are.

That's what we can see here.

The idols are not enough, but Lord, God, Yahweh, covenant keeping, promise keeping, God, you are enough.

Found this interesting.

There's certainly a difference between providing and being.

So I am provider, I should be a provider for my wife and kids.

I work in part to earn a living, to put food on the table, to provide for the physical needs of my family.

If you guys got ticked off at me and you fired me today, please don't do that.

But if if you do that, I would have to go find another job that would sufficiently meet the needs of my family.

That's what God has called me to do to be a faithful husband.

But don't miss this.

I'm not the food.

In that illustration, the Lord is both the provider and he is our food.

We must taste and see that the Lord is good.

I fear that we have this collapsed understanding of what it means for the Lord to be our portion.

We too often approach it with a narrow mind or immature understanding of who God is and what being our portion actually means.

The imagery that is used in this passage speaks to the promised land, right?

We see that in the Yahweh language that was mentioned.

We also see that in verse 6 as he references both boundaries and inheritances.

And also in verse 5, I believe he uses the word lot as well.

David is acknowledging that all he has is God's.

He is acknowledging that all he ever will have is God's.

And that word lot, I did a word study on that.

I found two things.

It makes reference most often in scripture to two things.

The first one, God's will, as in the case of Exodus 28.

Listen to these words.

And in the breast piece of judgment, you shall put the Urim and the Thumen, and they shall be on Aaron's heart when he goes in before the Lord.

Thus Aaron shall bear the judgment of the people of Israel on his heart before the Lord regularly.

God is exercising his will.

And we also see it reference God's practical provision, as in the case in the distribution of the promised land that we see in Joshua.

Listen to this.

Brothers and sisters, it is God's will that will come into fruition.

And it is God's provision that will ultimately provide.

David acknowledges that God is sovereignly in control over his future.

And because of the new covenant that is the shed blood of Jesus, the Lord is not just sovereignly control over our future.

He is our future.

He is our future.

Let me use uh some language to some other language to try to explain what I mean by here.

We rest in the shadow of the Almighty, not just in the practical provision of the Almighty.

And there's a huge difference in the two.

The Almighty Himself is our provision.

He is our goal.

He is the portion that we should desire.

To understand that the Lord is our portion is to understand the following statement and sentiment, and that is give me Jesus nothing else, and I will be satisfied.

So the Lord is our protection, He is our portion, He is also our peace.

I want to make a clarifying statement here on this one because I want to be careful.

I'm in no way discounting the work of faithful counselors or psychiatrists or doctors with what we're about to work through.

We should take advantage of those God-given gifts.

The work they do is invaluable.

And I can confidently say without the Lord's work through some God-fearing counselors and psychiatrists, I would not be standing before you as one of your pastors, and I almost certainly would be in the grave.

So let me say that from the beginning.

But, but let me also say this the Lord gives you counsel.

Let that sit with you for a second.

The Lord gives you counsel.

We must be careful that we do not overlook the counsel of the Lord in our well-meaning efforts to find healing using other methods and tools.

First, for us today, new covenant people living under the authority of Scripture, right?

We can certainly seek counsel from other methods.

We can certainly seek counsel from counselors and psychiatrists, but we cannot do so at the expense of ignorance of the Lord's counsel through his word.

This is the expressed, written, holy word of the Lord.

We cannot ignore it.

And one of the difficulties I have seen with living under the counsel of the Almighty, in essence, living under the authority of Scripture and being in full submission to Scripture as a final arbitrator of all things, is we often do not like what it has to say to us.

We do not like it.

And a second is living under the counsel of the Almighty is that we we truly don't understand what peace really means.

I want to be really clear and blunt.

Peace is not simply comfort.

Peace isn't every problem that you have being solved.

Peace is not everything going your way.

Peace is not every relationship being perfect.

Peace is not your kids behaving perfectly.

Peace is not your marriage being perfect.

Finding temporary satisfaction or pleasure is not peace.

So when we give or receive biblical counsel from his word, the tickling of ears shouldn't be our primary concern.

Our concern should be faithfulness to God's inspired word.

If you feel like you haven't heard from the word, haven't heard from the Lord lately and you're waiting for some audible voice, stop, sit down, open his word, and read it.

I want to share with you some practical ways I've seen this play out in the last 16 plus years of ministry that are in opposition to David's submission to the Lord's counsel and instruction.

When confronting someone living in sin by pointing to the counsel of the word, I've heard you don't want me to live in peace.

I've also heard you don't want me to rest.

Yes, I do.

Yes, I do.

But but true peace and rest comes from one place, and that is from the Lord.

Not from your pleasure, not from your comfort, and not from everything going the way you think it should.

If anyone understand that understood this, this was David.

Think back on his life for a second.

Remember how screwed up it was?

Praise God, Nathan told David what he didn't want to hear.

And praise God that David listened.

We shouldn't just pat someone on the back as they biblically or as they blindly live in destruction, pursuing a false sense of peace, ignoring the counsel of what God's word communicates.

Another one I've also heard, you don't care about my feelings.

Yes, I do, but scripture should inform how you respond to your feelings.

You don't use your experience, you don't use your emotion to interpret the Lord's counsel.

That leads to Isegesis every single time.

Use the Lord's counsel, as David speaks to here.

You use the Lord's counsel to interpret your experiences and your emotions.

And here's why.

You can make the Lord's counsel be whatever you want it to be.

You can make the Lord's counsel be whatever you want it to be.

When you bring in your past experiences and your emotions and your personal agendas and/or your physical desires into your reading of scripture, you are in grave danger in reading into the text the counsel you want to hear, that will tickle your ear, that will give you permission to do what you want to do, anyways, and you are in danger of totally missing the counsel of the word the Lord altogether.

And the reality is from scripture is the counsel that we do not want to hear is usually the counsel that we most need.

Either all of God's word is living and active, or none of it is, which is why we say context is key.

Why we say things like scripture can never mean something it wasn't supposed to mean.

Why we say let scripture interpret scripture when we seek to provide counsel from the Lord who counsels us, we must consider all that he has said to us in his word.

Not just the cherry-picked verses that give us permission to live out the life that we want to live.

And I don't say those things to discourage us or to beat us up, but if anything, those realities should highlight for us that he is the wonderful counselor and the almighty God.

David speaks to him, giving counsel.

You notice what he does next?

He speaks to his ever presence.

The peace of the Lord is the ever-present truth that the path is most certainly, almost certainly, going to be a living hell for you on this earth.

But throughout the whole time that you are on your knees in tears, that you are weeping, that you were discouraged, that you were beat down, that you can't seem to function, throughout the whole time, he is not going anywhere.

He's not going anywhere.

Look at verse 8 and 9.

I have set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand.

I shall not be shaken.

Therefore, my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices, my flesh dwells secure.

In the midst of difficult counsel that we see in his word, he, through his presence, provides strength.

His presence provides peace, his presence provides gladness, his presence provides rejoicing, his presence provides security, his presence provides steadfastness, his presence is an ever-present reminder of his promise.

See, the peace of the Lord isn't in the ease of his counsel, it is in the sustaining, everlasting, and all sufficient comfort of his peace that is his presence.

Lord is our protection, the Lord is our portion, he is our peace, and he is our promise.

Look with me at verses 9 through 11.

If you picked up a listening guide, you probably saw at the top of the sermon portion that the title of the sermon is The Lord Is.

That is purposeful.

I hope what you have seen thus far in the text is that the Lord is the object of our protection.

The Lord is the object of our portion.

The Lord is the object of our peace.

And as we look at the last couple of verses, verses 9 through 11, the Lord is also our promise.

Think back with me for a second that all that David endured, all the sins that he had committed, all the sins that were committed against him, the enemies that came, the suffering that came.

But through all throughout all of it, David rested in Yahweh.

David did not rehearse over and over again all the wrongs that he had done or that others had done to himself, to him.

He didn't speak of how ill will other people were and how bad other people were screwed up to make himself feel better.

Nor did he live in the shame of what he had done.

David did not live in the despair of what his present circumstances were or had been.

Arguably, it could have been justified if he had done so throughout his life to just live in the despair of what his circumstances were.

We would have said, Oh, give that brother a pass, man.

Rather, as verse 9 says, his whole being, his whole being rejoices and his flesh dwells secure because he knows the eternal nature of God.

He rejoices inwardly and he rejoices outwardly.

He had spiritual peace and he had physical peace, because he knows that he will not be left for dead.

Read with me verses 10 and 11 again.

For ye will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.

You make known to me the path of life, in your presence there is fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Let me ask you the question, a couple of questions.

Who other than Jesus can live up to those words?

Who can see no corruption?

David certainly isn't speaking of himself.

No one can live up to that.

No, not one.

Christ alone.

Who can make known to me the path, providing for me the fullness of joy?

Jesus alone can.

He says that in John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

We could dive into Old Testament eschatology here, but we don't have time to do so.

Nor is it the main thrust of the text.

But I do want to make an important highlight.

David is most certainly pointing to the resurrection of Jesus in verse 10 and to the uh eternal physical existence with the Christ in verse 11.

And we should find hope in that.

Paul in Acts 13 references Psalm 16 as pointing to the promise of the coming Christ.

And guess what?

He came.

Jesus is our promise because Jesus' life, death, and resurrection alone is what gives us the capacity to experience all of what we see in Psalm 16.

It's Jesus alone that provides us the opportunity to do that.

Here's the thing that is of concern for me as I look both in my life and I also interact with many of you.

We often make the object of our affectionate pursuit, not the Lord, but we make the object of our affectionate pursuit what the Lord provides.

When the Lord or when the word tells us that the Lord Himself should be what we affectionately pursue.

The Lord being the object means you're not in pursuit of protection for protection's sake.

You're not in pursuit of portion for portion's sake.

You're not in pursuit of peace for peace's sake, and you're not in pursuit of the promise for the promise's sake.

Because you can pursue protection and not find the Lord.

You can pursue a portion and not find the Lord.

You can pursue peace and not find the Lord.

You can even pursue a promise and not find the right promise, that is the Lord.

But if you pursue the Lord, what we see from the words of David, if you pursue the Lord, you will find protection.

If you pursue the Lord, you will find your portion, you will find peace, and you will find his promise.

Believers and unbelievers alike, the Lord is.

And you most certainly will never be able to rest in the hope that is the promise.

And I, like you, when I read this, I was like, man, how do you even begin that effort?

Like, I see the teaching, I see all that David says, but how?

How does this brother get to this point?

Look with me at the structure of the psalm as we get ready to conclude.

I want you to see three things.

David pleads with the Lord first, the very beginning, preserve me.

Sounds like a pleading to me.

David pleads with the Lord, David submits to the Lord, David declares the truth of the Lord.

As John Piper put it when I was reading a note he had about the psalm, David's petition or pleading became his confidence.

Plead, submit, and declare, and he will become your confidence.

If you don't know how to respond today, respond simply by getting on your knees before a holy God and begging him to preserve you.

And if you have to do that every day for the next five years, keep doing it.

Plead with him, petition him to pervert you, submit to him, and ultimately you will be able to declare the truth that we see in Psalm 16.

One book I studied in prep this morning concluded with the words of an eighth century hymn.

And I want to share those words for you.

Now let the heavens be joyful, let earth her song begin.

The world resound in triumph, and all that is therein.

Let all things, seen and unseen, their notes of gladness blend.

And here's what I want you to hear.

For Christ the Lord has risen, or joy that has no end.

The Lord will preserve you in death through the blood of Christ the Son.

He is, He is all sufficient, and His joy has no end.

His joy has no end.

I pray that we would meditate on that truth and that we would put all the junk to the side that is this life, all the ways that we feel like we have fallen short, all the ways where we feel like things aren't going the way that they should.

And we would simply get on our knees before the Father and we'd say, Preserve me, O Lord, because I know your joy has no end.

In a moment, we're gonna get to celebrate that joy through the participation of the Lord's Supper together.

After that, the feel free to come during response song to pray.

But if you don't know where to begin, plead with the Lord to preserve you because his joy has no end.

Let's pray together.

Father, we're grateful for your word.

God, I'm grateful for this text.

And as as we read it, um, God, and we think about uh the implications of it, uh God, the the application of it.

As we see, God, 2,000 years ago, we see faithful saints like Paul, we see Peter both proclaim proclaim Christ using Psalm 16, and here we are, 2,000 years later.

God, and what a privilege it is for us today to proclaim the very same Christ and it have the same power and the very same spirit be present among us.

God, what a privilege that is for us.

So may we find rest and hope in that.

May we find joy in you and you alone.

God, for the person in the room who's not a follower of Jesus, may today be the day that they respond, recognizing and understanding that there will be no peace, there will be no portion, there will be no protection, and there will be no understanding of the promise of Christ apart from Christ alone.

So God, may today be the day that they respond.

And for us as believers, God, may we look at the structure of this psalm.

If we're in a place of despair, and we have been, maybe not just for a couple of days, or maybe even a couple of weeks, or even a few months, but maybe for years upon years upon years, we have continued to be in despair.

May we look to the hope of Christ.

May we look to the example of David.

If we don't know where we to begin, may we just simply get on our knees and plead with you to preserve preserve us.

And may the protection that is the local church come alongside us in that effort as we plead with the Lord to point out the truths of the Lord and help us move to a place from where we're pleading with the Lord for preservation to we are living in submission to Him and ultimately in the concrete understanding of His promise.

And may we do so for your glory and for your name.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.