Address—Bill Prost
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They we sing together the 1St 3 verses of #168.
168.
The night is far spent and the day is at hand. No sign to be looked for The stars in the sky.
Rejoice then, ye Saints, tis your Lord's own command. Rejoice, for the coming of Jesus draws nigh. 168 and will sing it to the tune of Home Sweet Home.
The night is for spent and the day is at hand, no?
Sight to bear, look for the stars in the sky.
Rejoice, then you're slaughtered.
Of Jesus draws night.
What a day will that be when the Savior.
Our fears are welcome.
To those.
To have Sheridan.
Is gross.
Hooked Crown and.
Corrupt.
Ed.
And will be theirs.
All right.
Compensation.
For suffering.
And loss.
What is?
Lost in this world?
When compared to the day to the.
Glory.
The third will prompt you.
Berryville.
The third.
Your is coming.
His people.
May say.
The Lord.
We'll just stop there. We might have time to finish it at the end.
Let's look to the Lord in prayer.
Our loving God and our Father, we thank Thee again for the precious words of this hymn.
And indeed, it speaks both to our hearts and to our consciences that the night is far spent and the day is at hand.
On the one hand, we thank the blessed God our Father that that day is near when we shall hear that shout, when that blessed one, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Will come and call us home.
But on the other hand, while we are still here.
We do pray for a suitable state of heart and a walk that is in keeping with those who are expecting our Lord Jesus Christ at any moment.
We own how?
Easily lost in this world affects us.
We own how easily we are persuaded by the spirit of things in this world.
00:05:06
But we do pray, as we open thy word together, that Thou wilt undertake for us.
Give that which is needed for each one.
And that our Lord Jesus Christ might become more precious to us, for we ask God, Lord Jesus, in thy precious and worthy name.
Amen.
I'd like you to turn with me this afternoon to a scripture in the Old Testament.
Second Samuel, chapter 21.
Second Samuel, chapter 21.
The story with which many of us are familiar, and yet I believe it has a lesson for us.
Which is worth repeating.
So let's begin to read in the first verse, and we'll read down to the end of verse 14, Second Samuel 21, verse one.
Then there was a famine in the days of David, three years, year after year. And to David inquired of the Lord, and of the Lord answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites.
And the king called the Gibeonites, and said unto them, Now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, excuse me, but of the remnant of the Amorites.
And the children of Israel had sworn unto them, and Saul sought to slay them in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah.
Wherefore David said unto the Gibeonites, What shall I do for you, and wherewith shall I make the atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of the Lord?
And to the Gibeonites said unto him, We will have no silver nor gold of Saul, nor of his house, neither for us shalt thou kill any man in Israel. And he said, What shall or what ye shall say, that will I do for you?
They and they answered the king, the man that consumed us, that devised against us that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the coasts of Israel.
Let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of Saul, whom the Lord did choose.
And the king said, I will give them, But the king spared Mephibosheth the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul.
Because of the Lord's oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan, the son of Saul.
But the king took the two sons of Risper, the daughter of Ayah, whom she bare unto Saul, Harmony and Mephibosheth, and the five sons, and noticed this should read.
Of the sister of Michael, the daughter of Saul, you will remember that Michael had no children, it says, until the day of her death. These were the children of her sister, a woman whose name was Mirab.
And the five sons of the sister of the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel, the daughter of Barzillai the Maholithite. And he delivered them into the hands of the Midianites, and they hanged them in the hill before the Lord. And they fell all 7 together, and were put to death. In the days of harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley harvest.
Andrew is for the daughter of Ayah, took sackcloth and spread it for her upon the rock.
From the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night. And it was told David what risk for the son of AIA, the concubine of Saul, had done.
And David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son.
00:10:03
From the men of Jabish Gilead, which had stolen them from the street of Beth Shan, where the Philistines had hanged them. When the Philistines had slain Saul in Gilboa. And he brought up from fence the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son, And they gathered the bones of them that were hanged.
And the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son, buried day in the country of Benjamin and Zela.
In the sepulchre of Kish's father.
And they performed all that the king commanded, and after that God was entreated for the land.
We may not speak for a whole hour, I know it's been a long day and especially for many of the children here, but we're going to try and make a few points from this chapter.
That, I believe, are good for each one of us, young and old.
You know God does not relate a story in the Bible simply so that you can hide you and I can have a nice interesting story to read.
You know, when our children were growing up and we had long drives in the car, they would sometimes say, tell us a story and they would sometimes make specific reference to when you were young, tell us daddy about your farm and things like that. And of course, there were usually plenty of good stories, but I'm sorry to say that most of them didn't have any moral value.
However, be that as it may, this story is not in here merely by coincidence.
You know, there are many times in this world when wrong actions are done, not only in the world at large among unbelievers, but there are wrong actions that are done, sad to say, among believers.
And often what happens and I have been guilty of it. Wrong actions are followed by wrong reactions.
And in this story, we have some wrong actions and we have some wrong reactions, but we also have some right reactions. Let's look at them here.
We find and this is.
Perhaps more in the latter time of David's life, we find that there was a famine in the land, and you'll notice that the Spirit of God emphasizes the length of the famine by repeating those words year after year. It must have been difficult. We don't worry too much in North America about not having food to eat because.
After all, if a late frost nips all the buds of the apples in.
Michigan Well, it's all right. The Washington crop will probably be good, then we can get them from Washington. And so we're not too worried about it. But a famine back in ancient times was often very difficult because they didn't have railways and trains and or, or planes and other things and great big cargo ships to bring food from all over the world.
And David here does.
The right thing.
He inquired of the Lord. We want to look at this in the spiritual sense, because sometimes God allows a famine, not so much of food for our bodies, but sometimes He allows a famine among His people of spiritual food. And sometimes, shall I say it out loud, we hear people saying in our assemblies, but we're not being fed.
We are not being fed.
Sometimes that's true, but sometimes perhaps there is a grain of truth to it, and as a result there are complaints and difficulties. What does David do here? As the king? He goes to the Lord. And I would suggest that for you and for me, that's a good way to handle it if the Lord allows a famine in our lives, either individually or collectively.
00:15:08
Let's look to the Lord about it because God wants to feed his people.
He wants to bless them.
And God does not willingly withhold the good food spiritually that we need.
Unless he wants to get our attention.
And the answer wasn't long in coming.
The Lord tells David it is for Saul and for his bloody house because he slew the Gibeonites. And of course, you will remember who the Gibeonites were. They were a mighty nation back in the days of Joshua, and when they realized that they were no match for the armies of Israel, they played a trick.
Excuse me?
They played a trick. They got moldy bread and old clothes and old shoes and all the rest of it and old water bottles that were all split and so on. And then they came to the people of Israel and told them they'd come from a far country, and they said, no, you make a league with us.
And you know, on that occasion Joshua didn't consult the Lord. They made a league with them.
And afterward they found they give you a night slipped right there in the land, and that this was their way of ensuring that they would not be annihilated and driven out by the Israelites.
Well, Saul in his zeal had decided to break the oath that was sworn to the Gibeonites, and he slew a number of them, and the Lord did not forget it.
David might easily have said he didn't say it, but he might easily have said Lord.
That's not my problem, is it? That was Saul's doing. I didn't do it. That happened long before I was king. Do I have to suffer because of a problem that went on when Saul was king?
Sometimes we talk like that, don't we? Sometimes there are questions in our minds that arise, and perhaps we say to ourselves, but that isn't my problem. I had nothing to do with that.
You know, God sometimes tests us by not dealing with an issue right away, but allowing it to go on for a while and then drawing it to our attention. And that is what happened here. The Lord was going to see how people reacted to something that in one sense, yes, was not their doing, but yet God.
Held all.
Israel responsible?
And God sometimes holds His people responsible collectively for what has happened in the past, in order that we may deal with it in His presence.
Let us not take the attitude and say that's not my problem. No, let us remember that if something happened in the past that casts a long shadow, the Lord is giving us the opportunity to deal with it.
With him.
We deal with it with him.
So what happens here?
I believe here that there was failure on David's part.
I don't want to say too much.
I don't know how I would have reacted under the circumstances, but does David consult the Lord again?
Does David ask the Lord what to do about it? No.
I am firmly convinced that if David had gone to the Lord about it.
There might have been a better way of dealing with the problem.
But he didn't. David felt he knew how to handle it. And So what does he say here in verse 3?
Wherefore David said unto the Giunites, What shall I do for you, and wherewith shall I make the atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of the Lord?
Oh dear.
00:20:00
For the gibeonites, the ones to say what ought to be done.
Oh, what comes in here? The element of revenge. The element of revenge.
It's a sad thing when that kind of feeling overtakes the people of God. It goes on out in the world.
It goes on all the time where a wrong has been done.
And people will not be satisfied unless there's revenge.
It's only Divine Love operative in our hearts that can prevent that feeling from taking over.
Where the Gibeonites the one to be the ones to be blessing the inheritance of the Lord? Was it their blessing that was going to make the land productive again? Oh no, Oh no.
Was it they that needed to be satisfied? Who had allowed the famine? The Gibeonites? Oh no.
And so here we find that dear David made a mistake. There was a wrong action here.
And the Gibeonites, they take what seems to be very high ground. Oh no, David, we don't want any silver or gold, nor do we want you to kill any man in Israel.
But that man that consumed us, that man that consumed us, we want satisfaction. That used to be the watchword, you know, back in the days when duels were fought. I want satisfaction. And even though duels are not allowed today, people want satisfaction. Someone murders one of their family.
We want that murderer taken to court and justice done.
And here, that's what the Gibeonites wanted.
And what do they say here?
Verse six. Let seven men of his sons, O my, be delivered unto us.
And we will hang them up unto the Lord in Gibeah of Saul. Whom the Lord?
Oh, not only do they want revenge, but they're going to put a religious construction on it. They're going to take these men and pretend that this is something that the Lord wants them to do. They're going to hang them up unto the Lord.
Very solemn.
And they mentioned Saul even to the point of acknowledging that he was the one that the Lord did choose.
Now I don't want to read into this what isn't here, but if it's not here, the point I'm going to make I believe is correct.
Is there a sense in which the Gibeonites are saying in a very subtle way?
The Lord put that man on the throne and look what he did to us.
Is there a sense there? I leave you to decide that.
I think there is.
In other words, there is that very subtle way in which the blame.
Can get transferred from man up to the Lord and I hesitate to say it but I have heard it more than once in conversation with people.
I heard it from a brother once where things had gone badly in his life and things had not worked out. And these were his very words. The Lord, the Lord let me down. The Lord really let me down.
To remember an older sister many years ago who looked so utterly miserable that I ventured to go up and have a chat with her and oh, she was miserable. Why? And I hesitate to say this, but it's true. And I'm persuaded that she was not the only one. At least I mean in a broad sense.
And she related to me a long tale about some wrong that had been done to her and some things that had happened in her local assembly. And she was. So you could tell that. Well, I'll have to say it, it was anger welling up within her.
00:25:06
Oh, I said, can you not take that to the Lord and have it out with him and get right with Him first, so that he takes away all that?
Never forget her words, she said. I do try to do that, but the Lord doesn't listen.
Ouch.
Can I believe or talk like that? I've heard it and I could. I could multiply a few more stories. What was her problem? Turn for a moment. Keep your place here, but turn to first Peter 5. Here is an important verse and I just passed this on as an aside.
But it's going to relate to what we see later in the chapter.
First Peter chapter 5 and verse 6.
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God.
That he may exalt you in due time. And then what does it say? Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you.
It doesn't say humble yourself under the mighty hand of that other brother or sister that wronged you or humbled yourselves under that difficult situation that somehow came into your life. And maybe you and I are tempted to say.
What did I do to deserve this?
And if we don't say it out loud, maybe it goes through our minds a few times. Now back. Well, before we go back, do we sometimes kneel down and really want to do what we get in the seventh verse? Casting all your care upon Him for He careth for you. I would only suggest this. Sometimes we have to go through the sixth verse first.
Sometimes the problem is that we haven't humbled ourselves and accepted it from the Lord.
Accepted it from the Lord.
Then when I've humbled myself under the mighty hand of God.
I can go to the Lord and say, Lord, this is an awful thing in my life, help me to deal with it. And He does, and we can cast the care on him. We can get rid of that desire for revenge. But now going back to Second Samuel 21, where we are here.
What happens?
What goes on here?
We find that, the king said at the end of verse six. I will give them.
Who are the Gibeonites?
To be saying that they emeritated revenge. Who were the Gibeonites to say to the king?
We want revenge.
Doesn't it remind you of the last incident in Matthew's Gospel chapter 18 where the man who had been forgiven those 10,000 talents went and grabbed his fellow servant that owed him 100 pence and insisted that he pay?
Those Gibeonites, they deserve nothing. They should have been all dead men, and it was only because of the grace of God and of course the trick they played on Joshua, that they were alive at all. They should have been wiped out. That was God's command to Joshua, to all those Canaanite nations.
Had they any right to insist on revenge? No.
Brethren, have we, have we got a right to insist on our rights and our revenge and start getting all worked up because someone insulted me or someone said this or did that or the other thing?
No, no, we're like those gibeonites, aren't we?
00:30:03
Those Gibeonites had no right to talk like that. What should they have said? They should have said?
Oh, David.
You're right, that is what Saul did, but we all deserve to die. What right have we to deal with this kind of thing and to ask for some kind of compensation or revenge? If the Lord has shown you that, that is why the famine is David, you look to the Lord as to what to do. But we have no right to get into the mix and be involved.
How appropriate that would have been.
What happens here?
These seven men.
Are taken.
And I've tried to imagine that scene. Here they are. They are the posterity of Saul, five sons of his elder daughter, Mirab, I believe, and these other two from Rizp, the daughter of AI. She was not a wife of Saul. She was a concubine. And you will remember that her name has surfaced before in Scripture.
We will turn to it, but way back at the time when the captain of Saul's army, a man by the name of Abner, was still trying to champion the son of Saul that had not been killed on Mount Gilboa, a son by the name of Ishbosh, Abner was championing, championing that man as king.
And for a while, things went on.
But then you'll remember that is Shabashath and Scripture doesn't tell us the truth of the whole matter. But Ishbosheth accused Abner of going into this woman who was Saul's concubine. And that was the turning point where Abner said that's enough from you. Have I supported you all this time? And now this is the kind of thing you do, accuse me of a fault with this woman.
And from that time onward, of course, Abner was going to turn the Kingdom over to David.
This woman had no right. She had been kicked around. She was a concubine of a king who had been killed in battle, and now she's the subject of a controversy between Ishbosheth and Abner. Whether there was any truth to what Ishbosh accused Abner of, Scripture doesn't say, and it doesn't matter.
But she's still in the picture.
And notice.
What happens?
This is the kernel of what we want to get at today.
And Risper, the daughter of Ayah, took sackcloth and spread it for her upon the rock from the beginning of harvest, until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest upon them by day, nor the beast of the field by night.
Isn't that beautiful?
Here is a poor, despised woman.
And of course, when.
Saul, who was.
Her husband, if we could use the term loosely, he wasn't legitimately, in that sense married to her. She was a concubine. He was off the throne. She was on her own. But she had these two sons, which I presume were hers by Saul. And suddenly, by force, these two sons are taken by the Gibeonites, together with these other five sons of Mirab.
Killed.
And then their bodies hung up in disgrace and insult.
Oh, I've just tried to imagine what it meant to that mother's heart. Here was all she had left. Two boys, and they're taken from her and not merely killed, which was bad enough, but hung up there as a spectacle and given that insulted position.
Of being hung up there so that everyone could look at them.
So what does she do?
All I suggest that here was one who had a right reaction.
They'll give you a nice header. Wrong reaction. But this humble woman had a right reaction. Why?
00:35:08
Here's the picture. She was not thinking, at least primarily, about herself.
Her thoughts were for all of Israel, there had been a famine year after year.
And her former, if I could say it, husband had been the one.
Whose I'll treatment of the Gibeonites was the cause of the famine.
She felt it and she felt the condition of things in Israel.
And instead of.
Getting very, very upset.
Instead of.
Well, in our day, she would have become a terrorist, wouldn't she? She would have done something violent, said This is enough.
My boys did not do this, their father did it, and now here am I, deprived of my two sons because of something their father did and did a long time ago too. No, she spreads out sackcloth. What does that mean? Oh, it speaks in every case. I believe in scripture of the taking of the humble place.
And of acknowledging before the Lord that we are part.
Of the sin and the failure.
How necessary that is, and may I say it perhaps even more today than it ever has been before. Have we any right to say I demand this of the Lord or I demand that, or this isn't happening right, or that isn't happening right? No, we do not. We need to do as.
Ezra did in his time and prior to him, as Daniel did in his day, who took upon themselves the failure of their nation.
And acknowledged it as if they were part of it. I have no doubt that both of those men had not. Let me rephrase that. I have no doubt that neither of those men had participated in the idolatry and the failure that caused Israel to be taken away into captivity. But they acknowledged that their hearts were no better. They acknowledged the sin as if they were part of it.
And as you know, there was a tremendous revelation made to Daniel and there was tremendous blessing in Ezra's time and what happens here.
This woman does much.
Because not only does she spread the sackcloth.
But.
She prevents the birds of the air.
And the beasts of the field from resting on that sackcloth.
She didn't want anything to spoil it. The birds of the air and Scripture speaks of that evil which comes about. It speaks of evil. The birds they nest in that mustard tree in the New Testament that grows into a great tree and so on. She's not going to let that happen.
But was there something else here?
I don't want to read into it what isn't here, but I suggest that in the very act of putting out this sackcloth.
She also prevents the birds of the air from molesting the bodies.
Of her two sons.
She didn't allow that desecration. She didn't allow that public desecration.
That has a voice from my own heart, because sometimes when the government of God falls on someone.
And we had it in the meetings using another scripture, and I'm glad our brother Bill mentioned it in his address. But I'm going to say the same thing.
In this address, don't let's feed on it. Don't let's feed on it. And this woman would not allow those birds of the air either to rest on the sackcloth or to feed on those bodies. There was not going to be that desecration.
That took some doing. Can you imagine having to keep watch day and night? It seems to me that only a mother's heart would be able to do that. But she did it in order that that desecration of the sackcloth.
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And of the bodies might not happen.
You and I might say, what good would all that do? The boys were sit, were killed, the damage was done. What's all that going to mean?
Sometimes you know when you and I and I speak now, perhaps to those who.
Are not only young people, but those who might feel that they are rather insignificant in their local meetings. When the Lord by his angels spoke to Gideon, you'll remember he said the Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor.
And you'll remember Gideon's response, he said. Oh, he said, my family is poor in Manasseh and I am the least in my father's house.
I am I going to do that? Am I a mighty man of valor? He was.
Why? Because the Lord could use a man who was humbled before him.
And acknowledged the state of things in Israel. The Lord can use you if you and I will spread out the sackcloth before him and if we will refrain from feeding on perhaps those things that have gone on. Yes, from God's standpoint. This was, I believe the righteous government of God.
On Saul's house, from man's standpoint, I believe there could have been a happier way of dealing with it.
Had David looked to the Lord? But here was a woman with a right reaction.
Don't let a wrong action in others provoke a wrong reaction in you and in me. And what happens? Verse 11 And it was told David what Risper, the daughter of AI of the concubine of Saul, had done.
It got right back to the king.
I suggest here, and I'm going to look at it in that way that David speaks to us of the Lord Himself.
You may say, no one's going to notice if I humble myself and pray, and no one's going to notice if I just keep my mouth shut and refuse to feed on the problems and difficulties among the people of God.
It reaches the ears of the Lord. The Lord sees it and what happens? All this to me is most instructive and most encouraging. What happens in verse 12? Excuse me?
And David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of Jonathan his son, from the men of Jabesh Gilead, which had stolen them from the street of Beth Chan.
Where the Philistines had hanged them when the Philistines had slain Saul in Gilboa.
Why did David do that?
What did the bones of Saul and Jonathan have to do with these seven sons of Saul that had been just most recently hanged up there as a result of the Gibeonites wanting them? Why all of a sudden the interest in the bones of Saul and Jonathan that had been?
Slain many, many years before.
Ah, by now the Lord's getting through to David.
I say it to each one here, and especially to the young people. Let me be plain sometimes you may be very dissatisfied with the way things are going in your local assembly.
Let me tell you if you act in the character of Rizpah.
The Lord will notice it, and He has a way of getting through to those who can do something about the problem, and perhaps even more than you and I think.
Yes, Saul had slain the Gibeonites, and so, if we could use the expression, there was some unfinished business that had to be looked after by David.
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But it wasn't the only thing.
What had happened to Saul and Jonathan? Oh, you will remember, sad to say that Jonathan did not go into rejection with David. And when that memorable battle occurred on Mount Gilboa, Saul's sons, not just Jonathan, but others of them.
Mount Kishore and others, along with Saul, were killed in that battle.
And the Philistines, in order to emphasize their victory, did the very thing that was done to these seven men whom the Gibeonites killed. They went and hung their bodies up in a place called Beth Chan.
But you will remember that the men of Jabish Gilead came and took them down. They went all night and secretly took them down and buried them. Why the men of Jabish Gilead?
They had good memories, didn't they? They had good memories. They remembered back to the days when Saul, as the king of Israel in his early days, had come to their rescue. They remembered the time when they were in big trouble.
And when?
Their enemies were going to thrust out their right eyes and so on for a reproach against Israel, and they remember that Saul had marshalled the armies of Israel and come to their rescue.
That was beautiful.
You know, excuse me.
Saul was not a godly man.
And sad to say, I have no doubt in my own mind.
That he went into a lost eternity.
But it's interesting that this is recorded of Saul and the men of Jabesh. Gilead remembered it, and if we were to go on to another scripture, which we will not turn to for the moment.
We find that when all the material that was.
Stocked up if we could use the term to build the temple. Solomon's temple. Saul's name is mentioned among those who laid up something for the temple.
I'd like to make an application of that. Sometimes there are, dear brethren.
Who go off the rails, if we might say.
And who end up perhaps with their lives in such a way that we shake our heads and say, what a loss.
First of all, I have to look at my own heart and say yes, and I could easily be one of them.
But then I have to remember.
There at the judgment seat of Christ, there's going to be a reward for what they did for the Lord. And it doesn't hurt to remember us to remember them. It doesn't hurt to remember what they did for the Lord.
And so it is here. There's a reference made to it. And what does David do? He remembers Jonathan, and not only the fact that Jonathan was his good friend, but there had been times when Jonathan acted in a wonderful way to win tremendous victories for the Lord.
Tremendous victories, almost single handed with his armor bearer. He'd gone out against the Philistines and.
Won tremendous victories.
Just make a little remark here and I leave you to decide if it's possible or not. I've said it before.
If you read the catalogue of David's Mighty Men in Second Samuel 23, you will find at the end that it says 30 and seven in all.
But if you count them up.
There are only 36.
I've wondered sometimes if David reserved a place for Jonathan.
I don't know. I don't want to go beyond scripture, but somebody's missing there.
And I have wondered if David didn't put him in because he never in that sense served under David. But if David recognized the heart of Jonathan, and here Saul and Jonathan, the rightful king and his son had never had what we would call a proper barrier. Things hadn't been done properly. And David goes back and does it.
00:50:14
He goes back and does it.
And what does he do in verse 13?
And he brought up from thence the bones of Saul, and the bones of Jonathan his son, and they gathered the bones of them that were hanged.
And of the bones of Saul and Jonathan his son buried they in the country of Benjamin and Zela, in the sepulchre of Kish's father. And they performed all that the king commanded.
And after that God was entreated for the land.
Oh, how beautiful.
All starting off with the action of one humble woman who did not think of herself and of what was due to her, or of the awful act that had just been committed against her two sons. She did not.
Pursue that end of things. And there was tremendous blessing through what she had done. Well, that's all I have to say.
I leave you to meditate on the chapter. There may be other things in there, but let's remember in these last days, the heart that is really for Christ will transcend the individual hurts and problems and difficulties that Satan is going to allow to come in. And if I react to them, Satan as God, his toe in the door.
And once he gets his toe in the door, well, there's no telling how wide he'll push that door open.
And how difficult things will become. But if Satan cannot get a toehold in the door, if my thoughts are first of all for the glory of Christ and then for the blessing of his people, ah, what a difference that's going to make. Well, May God give us the grace to have something of that spirit.
In the last little while before he leaves, before he calls us home.
Let's sing the last two verses of #168.
Verses 4 and 50 Pardon us, Lord, that our love to thy name is so faint, with so much our affections to move. 168 versus 4:00 and 5:00.
Oh, pardon us, Lord, that our love to thy name.
Is so fake with so much.
So much.
Trouble.
So little.
To love.
OK.
Like that which was.
Found in my faithful.
Love.
Task.
Impatience like.
Face to.
Behold.
Just look to the Lord.
Our loving God and our Father, we thank Thee once again for Thy word.
00:55:01
We thank thee for these incidents which thou hast recorded, incidents which were related for our learning.
That we in these last days might have the encouragement of the Scriptures.
And might remember that thy grace.
Goes with us all the way home, so we commend Thy word to thee and pray Thy blessing on it for each one of us.
Some two that have left and are traveling. We bear them up to thee, thanking thee again for all the happy time we have had together over the past three days. For we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.