Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to the prophet Jonah. Jonah chapter
3, and we'll read for our text, verse 9. Who can tell if God
will turn and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that
we perish not? Jonah chapter three and verse
nine. What is upon my spirit are these
words who can tell and hope where there seems to be
no hope. There are those times in the
word of God that God appears to change his mind. He says that
he will do one thing, but then he does not do that. He said
that he would destroy the earth with the flood, that it repented
him that he had made man on the earth. But then we find that
Noah finds grace in the eyes of the Lord, and though the earth
is destroyed, Noah is preserved and the world continues. We find
there are those places in the Word of God that God does not
seem to leave even a ray of hope. The world is very black and very
dark, but it may be, as we gather this morning, that is where you
are. Everything appears very dark,
very black, very discouraging. Seems that God himself has spoken
against you, is against you in providence, in the things that
are happening in your lives and in your soul as well. And I hope
the word will be a help this morning in seeing that where
even God himself speaks against a people, that there is hope. and in the Gospel there is hope. And it is through our Lord Jesus
Christ that man, deserving eternal wrath and damnation, is given
a hope, a hope that is an eternal hope. And so I want to consider
some of those places in the Word of God. where it appears that
God has changed his mind, indeed, God does change the path that
he takes. It is an answer to those that
would have a fatalistic spirit and say, well, there is no hope. What will be, will be. If God
has said he will destroy us, then there's no use in trying
to get his mind changed. He will destroy the sentences
passed. A fatalistic spirit is not the
spirit of the gospel, nor that which is in accord with the election
and purposes of God. And we will see that through
the word this morning. I want to also really emphasise
where there is hope, where there seems to be, no hope, where there
seems only despair, that there is, even in that, a cause and
a reason to hope. And also the words of our text,
where it begins, who can tell? That's a lovely word, isn't it? Who can tell? If nothing else, through the word this morning.
May this word, from the word of God, fasten upon your heart
and upon mine, relating to what we're passing through, what we
may pass through. Who can tell? Who can tell? The whole word
of our text reads, who can tell? If God will turn and repent and
turn away from his fierce anger that we perish not. This morning I wish instead of
my usual three points, wish to bring before you five occasions
in the word of God that teach what this text teach. And I'll
begin with the text and then bring before you other portions
as well. We have here an account in Jonah
which is a very familiar account. As many, even if you have not
been brought up under the sound of the truth or regularly attend
the house of God, you will no doubt have heard of the story
of Jonah, how God's prophet Jonah was given the instruction from
God to go to Nineveh, the chief city of the Assyrians, and preach
to it the preaching that he bid him. But Jonah, he ran away from
the Lord. And he went down to the sea,
found a ship, paid the fare, and was going to go to Tarshish,
some 2,700 or so miles away, from the place where God had
told him to go. But as he sails, Jonah is asleep
in the ship, but God sends out a great wind into the sea, so
that even those experienced shipmen were fearful of their lives,
and they were all calling upon their own gods that God would
save them. And they awoke Jonah, they asked
him what he meant, Then they cast lots to see for whose cause
that great wind had come. And the lot, it fell upon Jonah.
God found him out. And Jonah then acknowledged to
those mariners that he was the cause, that he was running away
from God and from the commission that God had sent him to preach
to the Ninevites. And they were very, very frightened.
And they realised that they were in the power of the God that
had control over the sea and the winds. And here was one of
his prophets and he was dealing with him. And Jonah told them
that the only way that that wind would cease was that they should
throw him into the sea. Well, they didn't want to do
that. So they tried as hard as they could to bring that ship
to land, but they could not. So they cast Jonah into the sea. They prayed at that time that
God would not lay his blood to their charge, because it would
have been to their view, to our view, if we're in their position,
that they were throwing Jonah to certain death. And no doubt
Jonah felt that as well. But God had prepared a fish,
a whale, to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah's life then was preserved
in that whale three days and three nights. Our Lord speaks
of this account of Jonah while he was upon earth in his ministry,
that Jonah was a type, a sign, Jonah was three days in the fish's
belly and then in the fish's belly he cried unto the Lord
and the Lord heard him and spake to the fish and it vomited him
out on the dry land. Jonah's life was preserved. And
our Lord said that as Jonah was three days and three nights in
the whale's belly, so the Son of Man, the Lord Jesus Christ,
would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
When he was crucified, when he died, then he was laid in a tomb,
and three days later he rose again from the dead. Jonah was
a sign of that. He had risen, in effect, from
the dead. Well, God then told Jonah to
go again, as we read in chapter 3, to Nineveh the second time,
and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee." God said, er,
Lord said, that Jonah was a sign unto the Ninevites. And no doubt
those mariners had said, and it had become known, that there
was a prophet that was sent to the Ninevites, but he never was
to get there because they threw him into the sea. What a shock
it must have been then to suddenly have this prophet amongst them
and preaching this very word alive from the dead. And the
Lord used this and the Lord gave to those at Nineveh repentance
so they turned from their evil ways and God did not destroy
them as he said he would. But what a message that we have
here. In Jonah's message to them, we
do not read of any ray of hope. His message was, yet 40 days
and Nineveh shall be overthrown. A very simple message. And you might say, no call to
repentance, no reason to hope that God would change his mind,
yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. But even in those
few words there is hope and it rests in those forty days. And I've no doubt that Jonah
may well have expressed and called that they turn from their wicked
ways. But we do not read of it, but
we do read of the 40 days. And what I would say before you
is that the Lord gave them time. He didn't just say that they
were immediately going to be destroyed. There was time. Where there is time, there is
hope. In these Gospel days, we are
given time. It may be with you as well. You may have a diagnosis. You may have a hospital appointment. You may have that which the surgeons
have told you. But there's been a time given. It's not been immediate. There is a time. And that very
time gives a ray of hope. When Adam first sinned, then
it was said, the sentence was, in the day that thou eatest thereof,
thou shalt surely die. When Adam sinned, Adam did not
die immediately physically, he died spiritually. But physically
he was given time, and in that time, a time to repent, a time
of blessing. In that time, the time that is
given for this earth to remain, it is a time when men and women
are brought to repent, acknowledge their sin and turn to the Lord
and obtain His favour and blessing and a hope of heaven. Time, and especially where we
read of 40 days, it raises up hope. And certainly the Ninevites
used that 40 days. They used it to show forth their
real repentance by ceasing from their wicked ways, from prostrating
them before the Lord in sackcloth and from crying unto the Lord
in prayer. May we use the time that we have
had and that we have in prayer and in undoing or turning away
from those ways that we are walking in that are contrary to the word
of God and for which things say the wrath of God comes upon the
children of men. And we remind you of how much
in the word of God we have set before us 40 days as a time The
flood was to be upon the earth or the water that was, it rained
40 days and 40 nights in Noah's day. The flood was on the earth
or Noah was in the ark over a whole year. But it was 40 days that
the rain came. And Moses, when the children
of Israel came out of Egypt and went to Mount Sinai, He was in
the mount 40 days and 40 nights on two occasions when the law
of God was given and written in tables of stone. The spies,
when they came to the promised land, were sent into Canaan and
they searched that land for 40 days. Then when they brought
back an evil report, God sent the children of Israel back into
the wilderness not 40 days, but 40 years. And we read in Deuteronomy
at the end of that time, that thou shalt remember all the way
that the Lord thy God hath led thee these 40 years in the wilderness
to prove thee, to try thee, to humble thee, to know what was
in thine heart, whether thou would serve the Lord or no. We have our Lord Jesus Christ,
tempted by Satan 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness immediately
after he was baptized. We only read of the specific
temptations, three of them, at the end of that 40 days. But
it is a time of testing. And so when our Lord rose from
the dead, For 40 days he appeared unto his disciples before he
ascended up into heaven as a time to prove truly he had risen from
the dead and appeared unto many even 500 brethren at once over
those 40 days. So we have here with the Ninevites
a time that was given in Jonah's message, yet forty days and Nineveh
shall be overthrown. And there in the midst of a sentence
of death, an overthrow no doubt to be like unto Sodom and Gomorrah,
there was a hope. And we see here in the inspired
Word of God how that hope was used and what the Ninevites did. We are told why Jonah did run
away in the first place. In verse two of chapter four,
he prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not
this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled
before unto Tarshish, for I knew that thou art a gracious God
and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness, and repentest
thee of the evil." Jonah knew if God sent warning to a nation,
then he would give them repentance. He knew also that Nineveh was
the capital city of the very cruel and wicked Gentile nation
of Assyria. God was not visiting and blessing
his own people Israel, but was blessing the Gentiles. And that
for Jonah was a very hard thing. But the gospel, and here it is
prefigured in Jonah, is to be preached not just to the Jews,
not just to Israel, but to every nation, kindred, and tongue. And we see this blessing unto
the Ninevites. And even though Jonah was cross,
why, no doubt Jonah thought, I have said, I have preached
that it would perish in 40 days, and now it's not happened. Those
of Nineveh would turn around and say, Jonah, it wasn't true
what you said. It hasn't been destroyed. He
would have much rather see his word come to pass and it be destroyed. But those Ninevites that did
what they did by faith would have known most certainly if
they had not turned, if they had not repented, they would
have been destroyed. Our Lord was very clear. Except
ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. And that is the message
to us all this morning. Except ye repent, you shall likewise
perish. We are blessed with the gospel
day. We are blessed with the warnings
of the word of God and a way of escape through our Lord and
Saviour, Jesus Christ. And he himself is exalted to
give repentance and remission of sins unto a spiritual Israel. It is the blessing of the Lord
to turn us away from our evil ways and turn us unto him. In the account of Jonah, in the
account of the Ninevites, there is a who can tell. There's a
hope that is raised up, even to a people that were as wicked
as the Assyrians were. And may it be an encouragement
to us, especially when we may feel our sin, and the wickedness
of our hearts, our love of sin, our love of the world, our hatred
to God by nature, our turning away from Him and look back on
a life of godlessness, that we might see still that hope in
the Lord Jesus Christ. Israel themselves, through the
times of their great wickedness in their history, were held out
these promises and times of repentance. But many times they said there
is no hope. And because they thought there
was no hope, they went on in their own wicked ways. And that
is a warning to us. If we think there is no hope,
then it means that we will still continue on in doing our wickedness
and sinful ways. But when we have set before us
that there is hope, it gives us the incentive to change and
to turn. Hope thou in God, says the psalmist
when he was so low and despondent. Hope thou in God, for I shall
yet praise him who is the health of my countenance and my God. And so in this, there is that
hope and may it be to any that have been so discouraged, so
downhearted, feel to be in such a hopeless condition, to know
that there is hope and that hope is in the Lord Jesus Christ and
is in prayer and is in the expectation that if we confess our sins,
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. He will give us repentance. He
will change our heart and turn our feet unto him. So we have
the first message of hope here in our text in the Ninevites. Who can tell if God will turn
and repent and turn away from his fierce anger that we perish
not. The second word that I bring
before you is a word that you find in the first book of Samuel
and chapter 23. It is a time when David, who
was to be king over Israel, was fleeing for his life from King
Saul. and Saul was seeking him at every
opportunity. But David loved Israel, and he
heard that one of the towns, the cities, Keilah, was being
attacked by the Philistines, the old enemy of Israel. And he asked of the Lord if he
should go and deliver the people of Keelah. David inquired of the Lord, saying,
shall I go and smite these Philistines? And the Lord said unto David,
go and smite the Philistines and save Keelah. Well, David
did that, and he delivered Keelah. But then he stayed in that city,
and it was in a city that had walls and bars, or a
town, as he said before us in verse 7 here. It was told Saul
that David was come to Keilah, and Saul said, God hath delivered
him into mine hand, for he is shut in by entering into a town
that hath gates and bars. So David then heard that Saul
was secretly practicing mischief against him, as in verse 9. And
again he inquired of the Lord, and he asked two questions of
the Lord, in verse 10. He says, Thy servant hath certainly
heard that Saul seeketh to come to Keilah to destroy the city
for my sake. Here's the questions. Will the
men of Keilah deliver me up into his hand? Will Saul come down
as thy servant hath heard? Two questions he asks. And the
Lord answered, only one of those. And he said he will. come down. There's a real lesson for us
here. We might have in prayer those
things that we ask of the Lord and that we're only given answers
to one of those things. David did not just take that
one answer and ignore the fact that in part of his prayer there
was no answer. He comes and he asks the Lord
again will the men of Keeler deliver me and my men into the
hand of Saul. And the Lord said, they will
deliver thee up. So David now has from the Lord
two things that will happen. Saul is going to come to that
town, Keeler. and the people of the town, in
spite of the fact that David has delivered them from the Philistines,
they are going to traitorously deliver him up into King Saul's
hand. Now, if David was a fatalist,
he would say, well, this is what is going to happen. Saul is going
to come and I'm going to lose my life because the inhabitants
of the land are going to deliver me up. But we read in verse 13
that David and his men arose and departed out of Keilah and
went with us wherever they would. They took the warning of him. And so when Saul hears this,
he doesn't come to Keilah, and of course, The people of Keeler
don't deliver up David. So we might look at that account
and say, well, what the Lord said didn't happen. But we would
know certainly if David had not have escaped and gone out of
Keeler, it would have happened. And again, we have the time factor. David had been given warning. He'd asked of God. Saul was not
yet come to Keilah. David had time, and he used that
time to profit. It is always an account I think
of when one would use arguments for a fatalistic spirit, that
there is no hope, that already it is too late, and that God
has already determined what should be done, and we cannot change
it. then we are to think of this account in Kila. And here it
is, a deliverance for David. I think Mr. Ansbottom, the former
editor of the Gospel Standard, pastor at Bethel-Luton, he puts
in his little book, Bible Doctrine Simply Explained, and he gives
the difference between fatalism and one believing in election.
If we were in a bus and it was on the top of a hill and it was
told that that bus would clear down that hill and we would smash
at the end of the hill, a fatalist would stay on that bus and say,
well, what will happen will happen. It can't be changed. But one
that believed in election would get off the bus because they
had been warned. If we believe in the election
of God, God has a people, he has a purpose, he has a plan,
he has those that he has died for on Calvary, he has those
that he will save. If we believe that, then we will
take the warnings in the gospel, we'll hearken to them, we'll
heed them, we'll listen to the word of God, and we seek by God's
grace to turn away from those ways for which the wrath of God
comes on the children of men. So this is the second reason
and way of hope, of a who can tell, of an action we should
take when we have time and we have a warning. The third I bring
before you is in the book of Daniel. Daniel chapter 2. And it is a time when Nebuchadnezzar
dreamed a dream, but he forgot what the dream was. He required
of his wise men not only that they should interpret to him
the dream, but that they should tell him what the dream was in
the first place. And his magicians, astrologers,
all the Chaldeans, they said it was the most unreasonable
thing to ask and that no king or ruler would ever ask such
a thing, that only the gods that are not of this earth would be
able to show the king's matter. Therefore the king was very,
very angry with him. He actually said a very good
principle. He said, you show me the dream
and I will know that you are able to tell me the interpretation
thereof. He knew that these so-called
wise men of his kingdom, that they would just, when they heard
the dream, make up an interpretation that was for many days to come,
so that when it came to the time, then the king would have either
forgotten about it, or perhaps it wouldn't even be in his lifetime. And the good principle is, and
I put it in a gospel way, you show me a God that is able to
show fallen man his sin, that he is a sinner, that he is under
the judgment of God. And I will show you the same
God that is able to reveal a precious Christ and the gospel and the
remedy and the way of escape. It takes as much the power of
God to show Nebuchadnezzar's dream as to show the interpretation. And it shows as much the power
of God as to show man that he is a transgressor and sinner
as it is to show him the saviour of sinners, the Lord Jesus. When the king then was so angry
at the answer of his wise men, he commanded that all the wise
men of his kingdom would be destroyed. And so the captain of the guard
went to seek out not only the wise men of Babylon, but also
Daniel, who was of the children of Israel and the captivity,
and of his friends as well, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. And when the captain of the guard
came to Daniel, then Daniel, he asked him, he said, why is
the decree so hasty from the king? And here is a good principle. The captain of the guard was
coming to destroy them, but Daniel, he stood up and he asked the
reason why. Why is this sentence? Why is this destroying of the
wise men of Babylon? We may ask this when we see an
open grave, when we see men generation after generation carried to the
grave. Do we ever ask why? Why is this
sentence of death? Why do men have to die? Why is there sickness? Why is
there sorrow? Why is there distress in the
world? Is there not a reason? Can we
not imitate Daniel in this and ask why? Can we not search the
scriptures and find out why? Death came into the world, and
we find that sin entered into the world, and death by sin,
that death is God's sentence against man, because man has
sinned, man must die. And so Daniel was told the reason
why. The king had a dream he couldn't
remember, and he wanted it remembered, and he wanted it interpreted. So then Daniel asks another thing,
and he asks of him time. He says that, then Daniel went
in, desired of the king that he would give him time, and that
he would show the king the interpretation. Again, we have this time factor. What was Daniel going to do with
the time that he'd been given? He was going to go and he was
going to go to his friends and he was going to tell them about
it. And they were going to pray to God and they were going to
seek mercy from God that he would show them the dream and the interpretation. What is your matter? What is
mine? What is the sentence that you
have heard that I have heard? Do we require time? Has the Lord
given us time? How are we using that time? Are
we telling our friends, our loved ones? Are we saying, let us come
and let us pray together? Are we doing like what is in
James? Is any sick among you? Let him
call for the elders of the church that they may pray over him,
anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer
of faith shall save the sick. The Lord shall raise him up.
Prayer is the appointed path and way that the Lord may, if
it be his will, raise up the sick, lengthen out the days,
bless the means, or use that sickness for spiritual blessing
and to give a hope beyond. the grave. When the Lord answered
Daniel's prayer and his friend's prayers, he showed him the dream
and he showed him the interpretation. I've no doubt, as soon as Daniel
started to tell the king the dream, the king would have immediately
thought, that is it. That was what it was. I recognise
it. I remember it now. You would
have known immediately. And before ever Daniel got to
the interpretation, the king would have known, here is a man,
that God has shown this. And of course, Daniel, he was
very clear when he had the dream revealed, he thanked and he praised
the Lord first. But then he goes in and he tells
the king and he says to him, you know, your wise men, they
couldn't show it to you. But there is a God in heaven
that revealeth secrets and maketh known to the King Nebuchadnezzar
what shall be in the latter days. And so with Daniel, the sentence
against them was turned away. Daniel saved his own life and
his friends' lives and all the lives of the wise men. He obtained
time. He saw hope where there was no
hope. in the face of the destruction
of the captain of the guard. So that then is the fourth I'll
bring before you is what we read in the book of Esther. The wicked man Haman had devised
to destroy all of the Jews and he had by deceit got the king
Ahasuerus to sign a letter saying that upon a certain day that
all of the Jews would be destroyed. In that time, the Jews were under
the rule of the Persians and the Medes and the Persians. And
it was so that there was 127 provinces. So a good time there
was of months before the decree would be brought into action.
and they had to send those letters out to all of that part of his
kingdom. Wherever those letters came,
there was such distress amongst the Jews. They knew that the
law of the Medes, the Persians, the law of the land that they
were under, was that it would never be altered. It couldn't
be altered, even by the king himself. and there was so much
distress and sorrow. Queen Esther had been brought
up by her uncle. Her uncle sat in the king's gate. It was because he wouldn't bow
down to Haman that Haman had devised to do this against the
Jews. When Morikei heard about the
letter, Then he sat in sackcloth and in ashes in the king's gate
and he humbled himself before God. And when Queen Esther heard
about this, what her uncle was doing, she then asked what the
reason was for this. And it is in that chapter then
that we read chapter four that Mordecai speaks to Esther when
Esther is so backward in going to the king. She says there is
a law in the land that if anyone, even the queen, like she was,
go into the king and not be called, then there's one law that they
should be killed. But Mordecai says, well, on the
one hand, we have this sentence of death against all the Jews,
On the other hand, we have a sentence of death. If you go into the
king and he doesn't hold out the golden scepter, then you
will be killed because you haven't been invited to go in. But there
is a who can tell. There is a hope. There's a ray
of hope. Maybe, maybe, Queen Esther, you
have been brought to the kingdom just for this time, just in a
position where you can go and ask the king for help. And so
Queen Esther, she takes this ray of hope. She's got two rays
of hope, as it were. One hope is that the king will
hold out the golden scepter. The other ray of hope is that
he will listen to her and somehow reverse that decree of death. And she says, after they had
used that time to pray and to fast and to seek mercy from the
Lord, she says, so will I go in unto the king, which is not
according to the law, and if I perish, I perish. And we know,
and from the account here, and you can read it at your leisure,
the whole account, how wonderfully the Lord answered those cries. how wonderfully the king was
brought to hold out the golden scepter, that he heard her request
and that he was entreated of to write another letter. He couldn't
reverse, he couldn't say there'd be no death, but he could say
that they could fight for their lives and that they could defend
themselves and that they had the authority of the king in
this matter. Now, in a gospel way, we do not
have to fear in coming to the throne of grace, in praying to
the Lord, that he will not hold out the golden scepter. Any poor
sinner is welcome to come to the throne of grace, is welcome
to pray to the Lord, without fear of rejection. We come in
the Lord Jesus Christ, and we come under a sentence of death,
asking for life. We already have, not like Queen
Esther, who did not have an assurance of life to be given. We already
have in the Gospel the assurance that he is able to save unto
the uttermost all that come unto God by him. The sentence of death
cannot be reversed. You and I, every believer, must
one day be laid in the grave. We must die. Our body must return
to the dust. The spirit returns to God that
gave it, but shall be given to us eternal life in heaven with
the Lord. And at the last day, when the
Lord returns, a body shall be given us that is incorruptible
and undefiled, that life that he has given shall be with him
forever in heaven. The Gospel holds out a much,
much surer hope than ever that Queen Esther had. But Esther's
hope, she took it, she embraced it, and the Lord blessed it,
and the Lord saved the Jews. Where there seemed to be no hope
for her, for Mordecai or the Jews, there was found to be hope. What an example it is. of those
under a sentence of death or a hopeless case, to embrace that
hope, to lay hold upon the hope that is set before us in the
Gospel. That is the encouragement, the
message of the Gospel. The Son of Man is not come to
destroy men's lives, but to save them. The Lord Jesus Christ is
their Saviour. He is able to save unto the uttermost. And so I want to bring before
you the last one, a fifth hope, and that is what is said before
us on that first day of the week when the Lord rose from the dead
and began to show himself to his disciples. But remember those
disciples had seen their Lord and Master crucified and slain,
laid in the tomb, dead and buried. There was two that were going
that same day on the way to Emmaus in the evening of that day. And
our Lord has risen from the dead, joined himself to them, They
did not know who he was. We read that their eyes were
holden so that they did not know him. And he asked them, what
manner, this is in Luke chapter 24 verse 17, what manner of communications
are these that ye have one to another as ye walk and are sad? Here they are so full of sadness
and they ask whether he's a stranger, and didn't know what things had
happened in Jerusalem. So the Lord asked them what things,
and he draws out from them all the things that had happened.
May that be an encouragement to you in prayer. You might think,
how can I pray? What can I pray? Well, you go
into your closet, into your bedroom, you shut the door, and you kneel
at the bed, and you pray to the Lord, and you tell him, just
as if he was a man there with you, you tell him, all of the
things that have happened in your life, and all of the things
that have happened to you, you tell Him. And you make your request,
you ask of Him, you pour out your heart to Him, because this
is what they did to the Lord. They told Him, they said, concerning
Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty indeed, and
word before God, and all the people, and how the chief priests
and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and
have crucified him. And then they say this, but we
trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.
And beside all this, today is the third day since these things
were done. You think all the time our Lord
was on earth, they trusted he should redeem Israel, and now
he is dead. He is gone. Their hope was gone.
The way they expected that he would save their nation, it had
all come tumbling down. And yet here the Lord then opens
up as he walks with them, in all the scriptures, the things
concerning himself, he showed them why it was necessary that
the Redeemer, the Saviour, the Christ that should come, Emmanuel
God with us, should suffer these things, that he should lay down
his life as a ransom for his people, that he should then be
raised again the third day. And it is through the Lord Jesus
Christ, his dying in our place, his receiving the wrath of God,
his rising again as a proof that that sacrifice was accepted. This is the gospel. It is Christ
that died, yea rather is risen again, who sitteth at the right
hand of the throne of God. He appears in the presence of
God for us. He hath given assurance unto
all men in that he hath raised him from the dead. Without the
shedding of blood there is no remission, but it is Christ that
hath died, his blood being shed, and it is believing in this that
is saving, that we should not perish, but believe in the provision
that God has made in his Son, that we should be saved from
our sins and from the wrath to come. May we see in these examples
I've set before you of the reason to hope where there seems to
no hope, a who can tell raised up in the Gospel of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ, a path to walk of prayer, a path to
walk of seeking from the Word of God how we should act and
live and follow the Lord Jesus Christ and his people and be
saved from the wrath to come. May the Lord bless this Word
to us, give us this who can tell and a hope where there seems
no hope. May the Lord add his blessing.
Amen.