Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to Ezekiel 36, and reading from
our text, verse 26. Verse 26. A new heart also will
I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you. And I
will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will
give you a heart. of flesh. Ezekiel 36 and verse
26, and what is especially upon my spirit is the taking away
of the stony heart. We know of course it is accompanied
with a giving a soft heart, but it is that which is felt by the
people of God, the hard heart. that in reading a verse like
this, to think the Lord is able to take away that heart and that
stony heart. The time of this prophecy, Ezekiel,
is with the captives in Babylon. The Lord has taken away Israel
out of their own land to a foreign land. And so all that is said
here, whatever may be understood in a spiritual way, it must be
looked at in a literal way, because they are taken out of that land
and the hills, the mountains, the valleys, the streams, all
of that land that had the children of Israel in it to enjoy it as
their land. have been taken out of that,
that is laid waste, and that is at the mercy of all of the
heathen and all of their enemies, and they are captives in Babylon.
And the heathen have seen what has happened. We always, and we mentioned it
before, how that whatever happened to Israel of old, It wasn't done
in a corner. Everyone is looking on. They're
seeing all that has happened. We see in some of our hymns how
the world looks upon the Lord's people and they're ready to condemn,
they're ready to find fault, ready to speak against them.
But the same as with Israel of old, the things that happened
to us, whether sickness or bereavements or the troubles in the churches,
troubles amongst the people of God, whatever it is we find the
world is looking on. And that was so evident with
the children of Israel. They looked on, they saw Rahab
when they came after 40 years to go into Canaan. She remembered
back, others in Jericho remembered back to how the Lord divided
the Red Sea before them. They hadn't forgotten that. And
they no doubt watched and known of all those 40 years. And then
they now were going to come into Canaan. And other nations saw
what had happened in the coming into Canaan. But now because
of their sin, they are brought out. And that is seen as well. And yet in spite of all that,
the Lord is looking upon it. And the Lord still has respect
for that land and for His promises and the blessings that He blessed
them with. And in spite of all of their
sin and all of their rebellions and all that they were, He still
is promising, not for their sakes, but for His own name's sake,
to bring them back. And in these gospel days, we
can see what is written here in this chapter was brought to
pass. They were brought back. They
were established. The Second Temple was built.
The glory of the Second Temple was better than the first. The
Lord Jesus Christ did walk upon it and the promises were fulfilled,
the scriptures were fulfilled in the Lamb of God that taketh
away the sin of the world. How wonderful for the Church
of God in these Gospel days to be able to look back to these
prophecies yet unfulfilled in the time of Ezekiel, but then
fulfilled and seeing what the Lord has done and what the Lord
has accomplished. And then when we see that, then
we can apply it also in a spiritual sense to the Church of God, the
people of God, those that have been blessed, those that have
been quickened and yet still know. a hard heart, an evil heart,
they still know the need of these blessings that the Lord says
in verse 37, I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of
Israel to do it for them. I'll increase them with men like
a flock. And we see in Daniel when he
understood by books the coming to the end of those 70 years,
and he immediately set himself to prayer and prayed. And the
Lord gave him prayer, and the Lord answered prayer, and it
was brought about. And so we have the literal interpretation
here, and then go from that in a spiritual way. I want to note
just before we come to some points, in our text, The emphasis is
on what the Lord will do. All the time we are reading these
words, and it's not just our text, but it's right through
this whole portion, but in our text it is a new heart, also,
will I give you? And then a new spirit, will I
put within you? And I will Take away the stony
heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. It is all the Lord's work and
the Lord's doing. And if we go back right to verse
23, I will sanctify my great name. And verse 24, I will take
you from among the heathen. It is what the Lord will do.
I will sprinkle clean water upon you, you shall be clean. From
all your idols will I cleanse you. And in a gospel sense, this
is the work of God. It's not in the power of a sinner
to cleanse his own heart. It's not in the power of fallen
man to regenerate and quicken himself. It is salvation, as
Jonas said, is of the Lord. And the Lord spoke unto the fish
and vomited him out onto dry ground. Jonah had no power, no
mind. And the Lord has ordained that
this very inability of man and yet need felt of man, it will
be a means of bringing him to prayer, bringing him to cry to
the Lord to do these things for him. That we might know in personal
experience that it is the Lord that has blessed us in this way
and done these things for us. To the crown, the crown must
be put on the Lord's head in all that he does for his people. On the other side, in this portion,
it is very evident that Israel was a rebellious people and it
was for their sin that they were brought away out of their land. And yet the Lord makes it clear
it's not for their sakes, but for His sake, for His great namesake,
that He would do these things for them. Again, it is an encouragement
for the people of God, not to sin that grace might abound,
but not to despair. What if the Lord was to say,
I'll only bless you if you're worthy of it, only if the sins
you committed were not too bad sins. But the Lord pictures Israel
as a people right from the very start, murmuring, complaining,
rebelling, limiting the Holy One of Israel. There's nothing
good pictured about Israel in themselves, only what they were
in the Lord. And there's nothing good pictured
In God's people, they're no different than the lost. They're no different
than all upon the earth. And the only reason why he blesses
them is for his own great namesake. None will say that he blessed
me because I was better than another, or I walked more worthy,
or had a good name, or good family name, or attended a particular
church, or a particular denomination. the whole reason of salvation,
it is of the Lord. And it is to humble man, it's
to lay him low and make him to know that salvation is of the
Lord. And so in our text there's very
specific things that we are to ask the Lord to do for us and
we'll feel that we need having done for us. They all deliver
us from generalities in religion. And very often we can notice
this in prayer. What is our prayer life like? Is it that we just pray the same
things and have a formality in prayer? I know in public prayer,
many of us in the ministry, I've no doubt you hear many of us
in prayer and we start to pray something and you can finish
the sentence and perhaps a paragraph because we use the same phrases. But I hope it is that we are not untouched by the things
that we pass through. And that in our private prayers
as well, that as we come into trials, as we come into experience
in our souls, Then we are taught to pray, and we pray for specific
things. Hannah, of old, she says, for
this child, I prayed. And she's able to come with a
very clear petition that she'd made and a very clear answer.
If you and I are to have clear answers to prayer, we need to
have clear petitions as well. And that would deliver us from
just drifting through life with just general idea of prayer and
petitions. And so in the whole context here,
there is very specific things that are mentioned, and in our
text, they are heart things. And we would remember that the
apostle in Romans 10, he says, with the heart man believeth,
and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. It is actually a very vital,
a very vital aspect of our soul's experience when it comes to a
home. So what is mentioned, what is
meant when we have hearts? Certainly not the pump, the fleshly
pump that pumps the blood around our body, our hearts as we know
them in a biology sense, but the heart as the seat, of all
affections, of feelings, and what actually determines our
character and the things that we do, as opposed to our minds
and our thoughts. You know, you can have an actor,
and an actor can make out they're someone very different than what
they actually are. They go into a character, and
they play that character, but that character is not them, it's
just an imitation, and it is just in their mind, it's not
really what they are. And we don't want that to be
how we get through life, just to want to be like God's people,
or imitating God's people, or saying the right things, and
dressing the right way, and imitating them, when actually, in our hearts,
we're not really fully with them. And that spring and fountain
of what we are is not really right. God looks at the heart. We had that recently when we
spoke of Samuel going to anoint David, probably not here, I was
preaching elsewhere, and anointing David to be king over Israel. And Samuel first looked at Jesse's
sons, his older sons, and he said, surely the Lord's anointed
is before me. And yet God said he did not look
at the outside appearance, but he looked at the heart. When
eventually David was brought before him, it is said that David
was a very handsome and lovely man to look to. So the emphasis
was not, well, if you want to find someone whose heart is right,
you find someone who is outwardly not well-favoured and rather
ugly and coarse, and you know their heart is right. That is
not what is implied at all. But God looks at the heart and
is not deceived by outward appearances. And so the heart then is really
what we We really are. That defines us as a person. And in the context here, it is
the life, the life within. And so the promise of our Lord,
what he will do, a new heart also will I give you. And a new
spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony
heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. So on to three points. Firstly,
the stony heart. And then secondly, the stony
heart taken away. And thirdly, the stony heart
replaced with a soft one. Firstly, the stoning heart. I say this, that an unregenerate
person, or a person that is not yet called, and I say that because
instead of Samuel, he did not yet know the Lord, and every
one of God's children at some stage have been unregenerate,
uncalled, unfeeling, have no spiritual life at all. Those
without spiritual life do not feel a stony heart. They do not feel a hard heart
at all. It is God's children, those who
have been quickened into spiritual life, Those who have been given
spiritual life, they will feel the hard and stony heart. The stony heart is that which
we have by nature, that which does not take any
impression from the Word of God, is not moved by it. These are
really a very wonderful example. If you get a stone, And you try
and make an impression upon it. It doesn't move. It doesn't change
at all. What a difference to, say, a
piece of foam or something that is soft. Immediately it makes
an impression. But a stone is hard. The scripture speaks of the hardness
being like the nether millstone. You can go up in the windmill
there that I can see from the pulpit here in Cranbrook. And
you can see in the top there, the millstones, the great big
round stones they ground the corn with. Years ago, of course,
the minister here, the pastor here, he used to work over there.
It was Thursday evening, he finished work and he'd come over here,
change his clothes and he'd get in the pulpit. And very much
a part of the town. But you can still see those millstones,
very, very hard stones. And they're deliberately made
that way so they don't wear. And they grind the wheat, but
they themselves are unmoved, untouched. And the natural heart
is like that. That when God gives spiritual
life, then that person will, for the first time, realize what
they are by nature, not as just told in the Word of God. The
Word of God is very clear. The heart is deceitful above
all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? We're told that. We've heard it many times. But
God's people are to experience it, they are to feel it, that
they actually have a hard heart, a heart of stone. So how is it then that it becomes
evident and it is known that it is the heart of stone? Well,
to think of the illustration, if things are brought against
the stone and there's no impression and no dent and nothing done,
then it's shown how hard that stone actually is. And so we
can have things as well. that God will bring and we will
think naturally and you might have heard and read in our hymns
about things being sanctified and having an illness and it
works for good or someone, you hear someone has died and it
works for good and it causes concern and seeking and causes
there to be prayer and Spiritual blessing, attending
it. And yet though we know those
things, when we come into those trials and we see things happen,
and we're staggered, it doesn't affect us. It doesn't make us
pray. We can shrug it off. We can just
go on. We can hear a sermon that is
most searching. And we register it as searching,
but we go away, and we think, that hasn't touched me. That
hasn't made me concerned at all. And maybe we don't think it at
first, but we go away. And the next temptation, or sin,
or worldly snare that comes along, we're after it and gone after
it. And we think, did I not listen to that sermon? Did I not take
in what I've just read? I think this heart of mine, it's
just not taking any impression. It's not having any effect. And there's a wondering, what
will give an impression? What will change it? Sometimes the Lord brings one
thing after another. And that hardness is so felt. I remember a time over in Australia
that I felt like that, living on my own, felt in a very hard
state, almost angry with the Lord, and replying against Him,
all sorts of things. So one day, when I was ironing
my trousers, the iron burnt right through, that ruined that pair
of trousers. Did that soften me? No, I felt
more angry than ever. Then I burnt the pressure cooker
and the bottom bowed out like that and I had to bang it out
again flat. Did that soften me? No. And then
I was sawing up a bit of wood in the house and it flew off,
flew across the room and smashed the glass of the painting across
the room. Did that soften me? No, it made
me even more harder. And one after another these happening
within a week or two and yet the Lord knew how and he did
bring me to be softened. But I had to go through a period
of time where I felt most painful. I wanted to be softened, I wanted
to bow, I wanted to bend and to seek the Lord and to humble
and to confess my sin but I felt more and more angry, more and
more hard, and I had to wonder what will make a difference.
Well, remember what we said at the very beginning about the
I-wills, what God will do. But that stony heart, God knows
how long and how many times really in our life, and not just once.
But we have to prove that by nature, I think one of her hymns
says, by nature my heart is like a stone and it doesn't give and
it doesn't have any impression from the things that we go through. No doubt you've read of some
of those things that happened to the children of Israel through
the wilderness. And they saw those that the earth
swallowed up and swallowed up Korah, Dathan and Abiram. You
think that must affect them. Surely they would be humbled,
they would fear the Lord then, but then the next day they rise
up against Moses and say, you have killed the servants of the
Lord. And you think, haven't you learned anything? Why are
you so angry like this? And these contrasts, they show
what kind of a heart that we have. The Lord does, in a judicial
way, give a hard heart. You remember when the children
of Israel were in Egypt, the Lord says, and Paul speaks of
it in Romans 9, and he speaks of the sovereignty of God. He
says, that he saith to Moses, and this is Romans 9 and 15,
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion
on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.
For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, even for this same purpose
have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that
my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath
he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth."
And remember that Pharaoh's heart was hardened again and again. When the troubles and the trials
came, and he repented, and he said, I've done wrong, take away
this trial, As soon as the trial is taken away, then he's hardened
and he rebels against the Lord again. And then another trial
comes and the same thing happens again. You find the same with
King Saul as well. King Saul was given another heart
to be the king, but his heart as concerning the Lord was not
right with the Lord. And there he is fighting against
David. The amount of times the Lord
delivered King Saul into David's hand and David would not touch
the Lord's anointed. And King Saul had to admit and
confess that David was righteous. The next minute he's fighting
him again and pursuing him again. It's a very solemn thing to see
God in a judicial way, leaving a man, a person, to be hardened
in that way. But if you were to ask, Saul,
are you hardened? Are you hardened against the
Lord? No, I'm doing my own will. I'm pursuing David. You ask Pharaoh,
are you troubled with your hard heart? No, not at all. I'm not
having this man to rule over me. He's not troubled with his
condition at all. And so if you're concerned of
a hard heart, don't think. that you are like Pharaoh or
like Saul, because though their hearts were hardened, it didn't
cause them trouble or distress or sorrow. As we said, that hardened
heart is felt by and mourned over by God's people. But when you look at how you
are, you won't see any praiseworthiness of it. And it's good that we
don't. I fear there are those that actually put their title
of heaven as to their ungodliness, their besetting sins and the
evils of their heart. And they put those things as
a title for heaven. The malady, as if it was a remedy. But if you and I truly have that
malady, we'll want to be free of it. If we really feel that
heart, is hard and it troubles us, it grieves us, we want to
be delivered from that. We won't just say, well that's
a token on one of God's children and just leave it at that and
you go away until you hear the next sermon or until the next
time that things are brought to cause you to be a bit concerned
whether you're really right for heaven, really the Lord's people.
And you look at those as evidences. God's children, they know and
grieve over a hard heart. They feel they don't grieve enough,
don't mourn enough, don't seek enough to be taken away. But
it is a trial, and it is a concern, it is a burden. They don't put
it as a token for heaven, but they would, and I hope if that
is your case tonight, that such a word of this is an encouragement
because we do need encouraging when we feel what we really are.
We do need encouraging that God's children do feel these things,
that they are helpless in it. They do need the Lord to appear
and they do need the Lord to do it for them. What a solemn thing to go through
life and judgments and mercies, says the hymn writer in 76, they
don't touch that heart, they just go on. And nothing moves
it, nothing softens it, nothing brings to repentance, nothing
brings to godly sorrow, nothing brings them really even to have
the life of God within. They feel so worldly, carnal,
hard, dead, sensual, everything that is opposite from the things
of God. Our text, it says this, and I
will take away the stony heart out of your flesh. Often notice
the need of a time factor in the experience of God's children. The Lord says, your time is already
ready, but my time is not yet. The Lord had 40 years in the
wilderness for the children of Israel to walk through before
he brought them into the promised land. And during that time, he
chose out how long they stayed in each place. Sometimes it might
be just a day. And the cloudy pillar moved from
the top of the tabernacle, and so they moved. Other times it
was a year or more. And the Lord chooses with His
people how long they stay in any condition, what they experience
and how long. We know it in afflictions, illnesses. We know it in trials. We're not
told how long Job was in his trial, but he was brought out
of it. Those that are under a particular
temptation, how long they're under that temptation, God chooses. Those that are brought to feel
their hard heart, how long they are under that, the Lord chooses. Some a long time, some a short
time. But enough to actually the burden
with it and trouble with it. Perhaps to put it to extreme,
what if it was just for a few minutes? Or a few seconds? Or a few hours or a day? Or extended to a week or a month? When the Lord does something,
it is not to be measured really in time. but effectiveness. And the effectiveness here is
to be persuaded of this, that that person cannot change their
heart. They cannot do it themselves. Before that is the case, none
will ever value the Saviour. None will ever want the power
of God put forth with the Word. Sometimes the Lord uses means. He does use means. But the soul
that has known a stony heart and their inability to remove
it, and sometimes there may be many means and you think the
things we pass through surely they would do the thing, are
to be brought to know and value the power of God. When the Lord
made this world, he spake and it was done. When he healed,
when he was on earth, he spake and it was done. He healed the
mad Gadarene, he raised the dead to life again. Power was put
forth with the word. His word was with authority. Even when he was taken in the
garden of Gethsemane, He asked them who they saw, Jesus of Nazareth,
I am He. They went, they fell backwards.
The power of God. And yet it is a power that the
Lord limits in the Garden of Gethsemane. He said, thinkest
thou not that I could pray my Father and He presently give
me twelve legion of angels? What power! But how then should
the scripture be fulfilled? And so when the Lord doesn't
put forth that power, when he holds it back, there is a purpose,
there is a reason for it. But when that soul is truly convinced
that their condition needs the almighty power of God, and that
when they know that the only help they have is from the Lord,
then they are brought to cry. I will for this be inquired of
by the House of Israel to do it for them. Only that's a prayer
of yours. Lord, soften my heart. Make it
impressionable. Make thy word enter. Take away
this hard, unbelieving, lustful, sensual, worldly, hard heart. Paul speaks in Romans 8. that
the Spirit maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot
be uttered. Sometimes we don't know how to
pray or what to pray. He says in Romans 7, the good
that I would I do not, the evil that I would not that I do. O
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of
death? Various ways that the people
of God describe and experience and feel what their condition
is before God. It's hard to notice in the second
place then, the stony heart taken away. And though in one sense
it happens that that stony heart is then softened and that it
all happens at once, yet when our trial and burden is the stony
heart, then that is what we're asking and looking for the Lord
to take that away, to deliver us from that. Also it is a guard
against imitation. It's a solemn thing. If we can
one moment be so hardened and act as if we're like the ungodly,
And then at the flick of a switch, we can put on the right words
as if we were the godly. If the heart is really changed,
then it won't suddenly swap and change like that. Not in a moment. And so the blessing
is a distinct one that the stony heart is taken away. Often that soul will feel it
in it beginning to soften. But I like to think it in this
way as well. Our heart is what it is by nature. But what the Lord gives is not
by nature, is not just turning over a new leaf, is not just
a new way. And so the language of this verse
is a new heart also. Not, I will reform the old heart,
or reform the old spirit. No. Take away the stony heart
out of your flesh. Give you a heart of flesh. And
what is set before us is that gift which is from heaven, is
not just a reforming, not just a change. It is actually given
from heaven. Paul speaks of the people of
God as being new creatures in Christ Jesus. And in returning, in deliverance
from backsliding, in all that is done, We look again for that
for the Lord to do from heaven, that which is pure, that which
is the gift of God, that which comes as a sovereign gift and
work from above. And so the taking away of a stony
heart. Our text makes it clear this
is God's Word. You might have come in today
and say, Lord, shine upon thy work. Show me if what I am going
through is really thy work. Show me, assure me of my part
in the Redeemer's precious blood. Already we've had two tokens. One is to feel that stony heart.
Another one, where it is taken away. Bless God that the scriptures
are clear on those points as to what comes from heaven, what
is God's work, and what is man's work. And so we have the taking
away of the stony heart, and that will be immediately followed
by a third point, the stony heart replaced with a soft one. You know, it's not left in, say,
no man's land. Our Lord is very clear that he
cannot serve God and mammon, and that we are either the Lord's
or that we're not. And the Lord doesn't leave a
void, an empty place. He fills it, and he replaces
it then with a soft heart. A heart that immediately is impressionable,
and the word starts to affect it, and things that we go through
immediately are felt. Sometimes it can be felt softened. Dear Joby said, God maketh my
heart soft, and it's a good thing. And maybe we've gone a long while
and we could never shed a tear, feeling so hard. And then the
Lord comes in a moment and he softens us. That which I referred
to in my own case, the Lord used it to prepare me for when I was
living with my Dutch friend over in Australia and he was going
to be taken from me and go over to New Zealand. I didn't know
that. But that time of hardness, that was just before it was made
known. And when it was made known, then
my friend, he said to me, he said, I can't work out why I
can't get to New Zealand. And he was so perplexed by it. And I still remembered how I'd
had a letter from a friend, Mother in Israel over here, saying,
may the Lord provide you a friend, a godly friend, over there in
Australia. And I laughed. In my heart, I
said, impossible. That will not happen. It cannot
happen. And yet, two weeks after, the
Lord gave me this friend. And I didn't register. Didn't
thank the Lord, didn't realise that he'd given what I'd laughed
and said could not have at all, and had the 18 months, two years
or so that we had together. And then this happened. And so when he said that, I went
and got the letter and read it. And you know, that softened my
heart. That absolutely broke me to pieces to think that the
Lord had given me that friend, I had been so ungrateful. I had
not thanked him. I had not registered it. And the goodness of the Lord
just filled my heart. And that softened me while none
of those other things, all that went wrong, I couldn't do. That
did. And you know, within a week,
my friend got the letter. He could go to New Zealand. But
you know what I said? The Lord gave, and the Lord had
taken away. blessed be the name of the Lord.
You would have thought that it would have sunk me fathoms to
have him taken away. It would have if I hadn't have
had that experience. But when I knew the Lord had
given that friend, then I could let him go. And it is in those
things that the timing of the Lord is so, so crucial. And you find the things that
happen in providence so dovetailing in with what is going on in our
heart. Remember in Romans 8 we read,
all things shall work together for good to them that love God,
to them that are called according to his purpose. And the things
outside in providence, they work together with the things inside. And I proved it then, even things
that are happening in my friend's life, The Lord had made it so
that I was prepared to let him go. And the Lord knows everything
in our lives. And one thing I like about the
providence going together with what happens in our hearts and
the softening of our hearts is that very often we can forget
or be tempted about the reality of spiritual blessings. But when
they are so inseparably joined with Providence, you can't deny
them. If someone said to the Apostle
Paul, when he related the blessing he'd had on the Damascus Road,
you're mad, Paul. What? Have a light shine from
heaven, brighter than the midday sun. Have a voice speaking to
you. Festus did. He said he was mad. So Paul would answer, and he
said, well, how do you explain then? Before that Damascus road,
I was traveling to hail men and women to prison. I was an enemy
to the people of God. Afterwards, I was numbered amongst
them. Before, I hated the Lord Jesus. After, I was preaching that He
is the Christ. You explain that away. God makes
a change, and when He changes hearts, Very often that will
really affect us in our lives as well. What we do, the decisions
we make, the path we walk, made willing in the day of His power.
If we were in a hard heart, we made very different decisions
than the time that we were in a softened heart. And so the
Lord says, He replaces and replaces with that which is a heart of
flesh, a soft heart, a new spirit, a new heart also will I give
you and a new spirit will I put within you. Take away the stony
heart out of your flesh and will give you a heart of flesh. And then you see the immediate
difference in verse 27. Now I'll put my spirit within
you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep
my judgments, and do them." Couldn't do it before. But when the heart
is changed, then the feet are changed, and the life is changed,
and men will notice what is different as well. May the Lord grant us
to have life enough to know what we are by nature, to know what
our heart is, to know what it is to have the softening warmth
of God's grace, as in a moment, and that that to affect our lives
and what we do and what we say, and that it be a very clear evidence
that this is the Lord's work, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
This is not our doing, but it is God's work, and we'll give
Him the praise and honor and glory, and it will be an infallible
token from heaven that the Lord does know us and is working in
our hearts and lives. Remember those that laid claim
to his teaching and called by his name and the Lord didn't
know anything about them. But if you and I know what it
is to have our heart changed in this way and it affect us
in our lives in The Lord can never say that. God is known by the judgment
that He executes and God is known by His work in His people's hearts
and in their lives. The Lord's people, they know
Him and they know Him to be a God of power, a God of mercy, a God
of grace, a God who's done this not for our sakes, but for his
own great namesake. Yet we receive the benefit and
the blessing and the joy and the prospect of heaven and the
blessing of knowing that the Lord is our God. May the Lord
bless his word. Amen.