On the back table, there are
some little flyers that has the schedule for our meeting coming
up this week. So came, got here in a hurry. But I hope you'll take some with
you and share them with friends. And you never know, somebody,
you know, sometimes people will come to a special event when
they won't come on a regular time of meeting. So take advantage
of that. Never know who might be giving
ears to hear. So, Adam's leading our music
this morning and you're going to lead us in 228, is that right?
Okay, let's stand together. Adam, you come please. My faith has found a resting
place, not in device nor creed. I trust the Ever-Living One. His wounds for me shall plead. I need no other argument. I need no other It is enough that Jesus died
and that He died for me. Enough for me that Jesus saves,
this ends my fear and doubt. A sinful soul, I'll come to Him,
He'll never cast me out. I need no other argument, I need
no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died
and that He died for me. My heart is leaning on the word,
the written word of God. Salvation by my Savior's name,
salvation through His blood. I need no other argument, I need
no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died,
and that He died for me. My great Physician heals the
sick, the lost He came to save. For me His precious blood He
shed, for me His life He gave. I need no other argument, I need
no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died,
and that He died for me. Have a seat, be seated please. Good morning, we'll be in Psalm
28, verses one through nine. Psalm 28, one through nine. Unto thee will I cry, O Lord
my rock, be not silent to me, lest if thou be silent to me,
I become like them that go down into the pit. Hear the voice
of my supplications when I cry unto thee, when I lift up my
hands toward thy holy oracle. Draw me not away with the wicked
and with the workers of inequity, which speak peace to their neighbors,
but mischief is in their hearts. Give them according to their
deeds and according to the wickedness of their endeavors. Give them
after the work of their hands, render them to their desert.
Because they regard not the works of the Lord, nor the operation
of his hands, he shall destroy them and not build them up. Blessed
be the Lord, because he hath heard the voice of my supplications. The Lord is my strength and my
shield. My heart trusted in him and I
am helped. Therefore, my heart greatly rejoice
and with my song will I praise him. The Lord is their strength
and he is the saving strength of his anointed. Save thy people
and bless thine inheritance. Feed them also and lift them
up forever. Let's pray. Our merciful heavenly Father,
thank you for bringing us together and allowing us to be here. Thank
you for the precious promise of your word for the hope of
salvation that you give through faith to our hearts. Thank you for the promise that
would you never leave us or forsake us. You are our strength and
our shield. Lord, I pray for the upcoming
conference that you will give our preachers messages that will
be effectual to our hearts and give us ears to hear. I pray
for the safe delivery of all preachers and brethren. And Lord,
I ask you to help us keep the purpose of our conference on
our hearts. It's for your glorification.
Lord, I pray for my precious wife, Jennifer, and you give
her doctors and caregivers the skill and the knowledge to heal
her. Thank you so much for the strength
and faith that you have given us. Lord, I know that all things
happen are at your hand and for your purpose. I pray that you
would increase our faith and forgive us our unbelief. We ask
it in Christ's name, amen. We'll stand again and sing the
hymn on the backside of the bulletin. With joy our God we've come to
sing your praises here, to hear your word and worship you as
we begin this year. With grateful hearts we come
For your mercies we share In hope of mercies yet unseen To
open this new year Our hearts to serve your cause Father, by
grace Let us your loving kindness know
to keep us through the year. Prepare us for your will and
keep our hearts from fear. Help us to trust your providence
throughout the coming year. Forgive our sins, we pray, and
fill our hearts with cheer. O may our precious Savior be
our song through all the year. Perhaps our Lord will come to
call us home this year. With such expectant, blessed
hope, with joy we start this year. Be seated, please. Let's open our Bibles together
to 2 Thessalonians 1. 2 Thessalonians 1. What a glorious year that would
be. The eastern sky was to split. The trump of God was the sound.
The voice of the archangels was to cry. Dead in Christ to be
raised and those of us which are alive to be caught up together
with them in the clouds and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
Maybe this will be that year. I've titled this message A Manifest
Token. A Manifest Token. You have your Bibles open to
2 Thessalonians chapter one, we'll read two verses, verses
four and five. So that we ourselves glory in
you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all
your persecutions and tribulations that you endure, which is a manifest
token of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be counted
worthy of the kingdom of God, which you also suffer. A token is a sign. It is a symbol. It is a signal that points to
something else. It gives assurance of another
matter. If someone has to ask you for
a token of your love or a token of your affection, not only would
that token being given after you had to be asked not mean
much, it would be offensive. Someone had to say to me, I need
proof that you love me, I need proof that you give me a token. On the other hand, we often say
to those that we love, this is but a small token of my love,
a small token of my affection and that token means something. If we, like those Pharisees,
stand before God and say, I need proof, I need evidence, I need
a sign, then the Lord would say to us, a wicked and adulterous
generation seeketh after a sign and no sign will be given unto
it. He's offended for a sinner to stand before him and demand
that he prove himself to us. I mean, we're offended by such
a thing, how much more would God be offended? Nevertheless, the Lord has given
us some tokens. He has said to us in his Word,
this is but a small token of your hope and of my love. And it's a token that manifests
something else. It makes clear, it exposes, it
reveals the truth of something else. And so, as we walk in faith,
we are to take in faith the tokens that God gives and believe what it is that they
manifest. We don't ask for more but we're
thankful that along the way he gives us tokens. And that's what
he's done here in our passage of scripture. He's saying that
your patience and your faith and the endurance of those things
is the token. It is the token of the of the
righteous judgment of God and the hope of your salvation. Patience. We might lose our patience from
time to time, as we say. Generally speaking, that's a
sinful thing. It's an attempt to try to control people or circumstances. But here the word patience means
endurance. It means to be faithful to the
end. It means to not quit and not want to quit. It's the work
of God's grace in the heart. We know that faith is a gift
of God and we also know that the gifts of God, the scripture
says, are without repentance. In other words, when he gives
a gift, he doesn't take it back. So, The manifest token of God's
righteous judgment, in other words that God has made us to
differ, is that he's given us a faith that won't quit. He's given us endurance and patience
to the end. He's caused it to be so that
we can't not believe. He's put into our hearts a trust
in Christ and a love for Christ that cannot go away. And that's the evidence of things
hoped for. That's the manifest token. He's given us a Spirit that is
unlike that of the world. It can't turn back. It can't
go back. The gifts that God has made make us to differ. And let us not forget who it
is that maketh us to differ. What do you have that you did
not receive? And if you received it, then
why do you boast as if you didn't? You see, we have nothing to boast
in, in the difference that the Lord has made. The Lord made
a difference between the Israelites and the Egyptians, that all the
Israelites were brought out of Egypt. He made a difference in
that the death angel never visited the homes of the Israelites and
killed the firstborn of all the Egyptians. Notice in our text, verse 5,
which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God. How do I know that God has judged
me righteous? Because the endurance of faith
causes me to have to look to Christ for all my righteousness. The endurance of faith that he's
given to me causes me to have to look to the sacrifice that
the Lord Jesus made on Calvary's cross for all my justification
before God. I have no salvation outside of
him. I have no hope outside of him. This is the manifest token
of the righteous judgment of God. And this is the manifest
token that he has counted us worthy for the kingdom of God. You've endured persecution and
tribulation and we don't We don't go around
looking for persecution. We're to be at peace with all
men whenever possible. You know, I don't like people
not liking me, but there's a whole lot of people that don't. They've
made it very clear to me. I'm sorry, I can't do anything
about it. And the same thing's true of you. If you've taken
a stand for the gospel, there's some folks that hate you for
it. And you can't sacrifice the gospel
in order to appease them. You can't do it. You can't make a compromise on
the truth in order to be at peace with men. You're either going
to be at peace with God or you're going to be at peace with men.
The scripture puts it like this, all that will live godly in Christ
Jesus shall suffer persecution. Now we're almost ashamed to even
talk about persecution. compared to the persecution that
many of our brethren have had to suffer over the millennium,
last two millenniums, even before that. Believers in the Old Testament
suffered persecution with their lives, they were killed for it.
And our persecution is so light, it's so insignificant even compared
to what our brethren in other countries right now suffering
as a result of the gospel. But here's the point. The manifest
token that God has judged you righteous and that he has made
you fit and worthy for the kingdom of heaven is that whenever and
however persecution comes as a result of the gospel you can't
back up. You can't turn around. You can't
cave in. You cannot deny Christ in order
to appease men. You can't do it. Not when it
comes down to it. I mean, we, you know, we, don't
misunderstand me. We shun our responsibility to
take a stand like we ought to take oftentimes. But I'm talking
about somebody, somebody walks in that door right now with a
gun, puts it to your head. wants you to deny Christ or die. You can't do it. This is the manifest token. This
is the proof that, Lord, whatever persecution comes, you're going to hate me for it? The
gospel is offensive to the unbeliever. In the same way that we saw the
first hour, It robs them of their righteousness, it strips them
of their hope, it leaves them, it's called the offense of the
cross. Paul said, if I still preach
circumcision, if I still give men something to do in order
to be saved, then why am I being persecuted? Then is the offense
of the cross ceased. But the gospel is offensive to
the natural man. And they're going to be offended
at you if you take a stand for it. They're going to be offended.
And the only reason people don't hate us more than they do is
because they don't know what we believe. Now that's just the truth, isn't
it? But this, my brethren, and like
I said, we don't wear persecution as a badge of honor. I've heard
of preachers that, you know, they love getting hate mail because
they love being able to stand in the pulpit and read their
hate mail and talk about how they're being persecuted as if
that's some sort of badge of honor. You know, I hate it when
people do that to me. I hate it when they don't like
me. I like to be liked. But I can't back off the gospel.
And you can't either. If the Lord's give you patience
and faith, if he's given you perseverance and faith, you can't
change your position in order to appease a man. That is the manifest token of
God's righteous judgment and of you having been made worthy
of the kingdom of God. Notice also in verse 4 he speaks
not only of persecution but of tribulations. How many people have we seen
that hear the gospel, they make a, they're excited about it,
I mean genuinely excited about it, like that seed that falls
on rocky ground, the scripture says immediately it springs up.
and they jump on the bandwagon and they think everybody's gonna
love this and they go home and they find out that their family
hates it and they don't come back. Or they may stay for a little
while and then they fall away. Can't sacrifice those relationships
for this. You know, it was fun and exciting
for a little while But there was no substance to it. They
went out from us because they were never of us for had they
been of us they would have remained. That's what the scripture says.
So anyone who forsakes the gospel in order to satisfy the friendship
of a man never knew the gospel to begin with. The manifest token
of your faith is that you can't change. You can't deny Christ. And as painful as it is to have
people not like you, so be it, sorry. And then he talks about tribulation.
And I've seen the same thing happen. Trials, troubles, temptations. Oh, the Lord tries the faith
of his people. A faith that's not tried is not
proven. And this is what he uses to try it. He uses persecution,
and he uses trials, and he uses tribulation, and he uses trouble,
and he uses the temptation of sin. And when those things come,
if you don't have true faith, you're gonna leave. You're gonna
fall away. You're gonna give up. You're
gonna say, it's not worth it. But the fact that you can't leave,
though you may be, you stumble, you're tempted, but you can't
leave. You can't forsake Christ. And
in all the trials and all the troubles, John, you just read
it in Psalm 28. You know, we cry out unto the Lord in our
time of trouble. He delivers us. That is the manifest token of
God's righteous judgment. That is the manifest token that you are worthy of the kingdom
of God. Turn with me to As I introduce
this message, God's given us some tokens. I'm so thankful
for them. And I don't want to ask for anything
more than what he's given us. We don't come before God and
say, well prove it, give me a sign, show me a token. But we're thankful
for the tokens that he has given us. And scripture speaks of several. Turn with me to Genesis chapter
9. Genesis chapter 9. First, the first reference to
token in the Bible. Genesis chapter 9 verse 12, this was right after
the flood, had never rained before. From the creation of the world,
the scripture says this is the first time it ever rained. that
the earth was watered by the dew. And Noah starts preaching
the wrath of God and tells men there's going to be a flood and
that water's going to fall from the sky and that the ground's
going to, that everything's going to drown and be destroyed and
people thought, you crazy, we don't even know what that means,
that's never happened before. So this deluge that God sends
certainly is to be understood as the judgment of God. It's
the judgment of God. And so that's how we understand
this rain that comes. And verse 12 says, and God said,
this is the covenant which I make between me and you and every
living creature that is with you for a perpetual generation
and I do set my bow in the cloud and it shall be for a token of
a covenant between me and the earth. Now for a rainbow to appear in
the clouds two things have to happen. has to be water falling,
there has to be rain and there has to be sunshine. Now don't
misunderstand me, we already know that this water is a picture
of God's judgment, it is his righteous judgment and he sends
trials and troubles and tribulations in the lives of his children
in order to purify their faith. But here's the promise that he's
making with this token of a rainbow. That I will always attend the
judgments that I send and the rain that I send and the floods
that I send. I will always attend them with
the light of my presence. Now let the world talk about
a silver lining around every cloud, let them talk about, you
know, making lemonade out of lemons and all the things that
they convince themselves by the power of positive thinking is
going to make something good out of something bad. You know,
that's the way the world thinks. Let's just, you know, it's all
going to be good. They're whistling through the
graveyards what they're doing. They're saying peace, peace when
there is no peace. They're making a false hope.
That's not what we're talking about here. What God's saying
is that I will be with you. When I send trials and troubles
and persecutions, the light of the gospel in the face of the
Lord Jesus Christ will shine through those clouds and will
bring about a bow. And that'll be the token. The
token of the covenant is that I'm with you. I will never leave
thee nor forsake thee. Whatever floods come, I sent
them. And if I sent them, I will be
with them and I will attend them and they will not overflow thee.
I will keep thee. when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
refused to bow to Nebuchadnezzar, the manifest token of God's judgment
was that they were being persecuted and they refused to worship a
false god. And they said to Nebuchadnezzar,
we know that our God can deliver us from this fiery furnace that
you're about to throw us into. But if he doesn't deliver us
from that fire, he's gonna deliver us from you. Either way, we're
gonna trust God. And the scripture says that Nebuchadnezzar
chose his strongest soldiers and he took Shadrach, Meshach
and Abednego and they chained them up and they threw them into
the fiery furnace and the fire was so intense that the men that
threw them in were consumed by the fire and killed. And Nebuchadnezzar
looks down into the pit and he says, Did we not throw three
Hebrews into that fire? Yes, Lord. Well, I see four and
they're walking around. And the fourth one is like unto
the son of God. That was the Lord Jesus that
was in that fire with them. And he will be in the fire with
you and with me. Nebuchadnezzar said, let them
out. Not a hair on their head was singed. It was not even the
smell of smoke on their clothes. And Nebuchadnezzar bowed before
them and said, truly your God has got to be the one. He's the
true God. There's no God like that. No
God like that. There's the token. The token
of the rainbow is that every time we see the rainbow, might
we be reminded that the rain was sent by God and that the
light is God and that he works all things together for good. And that's not the power of positive
thinking, that is he works all things together for good. Come with me to Psalm 74. Psalm 74. What a glorious token God has
given. I'm not going to destroy you. The fire will not hurt you. The
floods that I send, believers have been strapped. to post and
burned at the stake for the gospel. What do you think they were thinking
at the moment? This fire is not gonna hurt me. God's gonna deliver
me. He may not deliver me from the
fire, but he's gonna deliver me from this world. Psalm 74, verse 13. Thou didst
divide the sea by thy strength. Thou breakest the heads of the
dragons, in the waters. Thou breakest the heads of Leviathan
in pieces and gavest them to me, to the people inhabiting
the wilderness. Thou didst cleave the fountains
of the flood. Thou dryest up the righty rivers.
The day is thine, the night also is thine. Thou has prepared the
light and the sun. Thou has set all the borders
of the earth. Thou has made summer and winter. Remember this, that the enemy
hath reproached. Oh Lord, and that the foolish
people have blasphemed thy name. Oh, deliver not the soul of thy
turtle dove unto the multitude of the wicked. Forget not the
congregation of thy poor forever. Have respect unto the covenant.
Now what the Lord, he said, this will be a token of the covenant
that I've made with you that I'm not going to destroy you.
The floods will not overflow thee. And here's the believer
praying, Lord, have respect unto that covenant, that promise. Lord, I've made plenty of promises
to you that I've not kept. but have respect for the covenant
that you've made for me. For the dark places of the earth
are full of habitations of cruelty. Oh, let not the oppressed return
ashamed. Let the poor and the needy praise
thy name. Lord, cause that sun to shine
in my heart, in the midst of the rain, and give me a token
of thy love and of thy mercy and of thy grace throughout all
the trials that you send, whatever they might be. Turn with me to Isaiah chapter
43. Isaiah 43. Verse one, but now thus saith
the Lord that created thee. Do you need anything more than
that? You need any other token? You need any other proof? You
need any other evidence? The Lord has spoken. Oh Jacob, and he that formed
thee, oh Israel, fear not. For I have redeemed thee. Past
tense, our redemption was accomplished at Calvary's cross when he bore
our sins in his body upon that tree and put them away by the
sacrifice of himself. I have redeemed thee. I bought
thee with a price and you're mine. Be not afraid. And I've called thee by thy name
and thou art mine. And when thou passeth through
the waters, I will be with thee. And through the rivers, they
shall not overflow thee. When thou walkest through the
fire, you shall not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle
upon thee. I'm the Lord. Here's the token that God gave
us in Genesis chapter nine. It's raining and the sun shining
at the same time. and there's a rainbow in the
sky. You ever seen a rainbow in the
clouds from 35,000 feet in the air? If you've flown much, you
have. I've seen several over the years.
You look down, you're flying over a real cloudy area and you'll
see it. The last time I saw one, the
shadow of the airplane was in the middle of the rainbow. And
it was like, how appropriate was that? But here's the thing
about it, when you see a rainbow from an airplane, it's not a
bow, it's a full circle. It's a full circle rainbow in
the clouds. You see the whole thing. God
sees it all from beginning to end. You and I just see a piece
of it, don't we? We just see part. but we know
that there's a God in heaven that's looking down. And he said,
I'm going to make this bow as a reminder to me of the covenant
that I have made with thee. So he's looking at the rainbow
and he's saying, it's okay, child, I've got this. And what I've
sent in the rain, I sent it. But I didn't send the rain without
sending the light of my presence. And I'm giving you a token. You see, we're not just looking
for a silver lining in the cloud. We're looking for a way of escape. We're looking for an ark in which
we can get. An ark that's been pitched from
within and without. And you know that word pitched
when Noah built the ark and he pitched it with tar inside and
outside. And that word pitch means a covering. It's the same word from which
we get our word covenant or which we get our word atonement, atonement. And that's what the Lord Jesus
did, he atoned for our sins and he is the pitch. I noticed this,
the ark, I read something some time ago, the ark they built
up there in Kentucky, on the border of Kentucky, Ohio, I think
it is. They were filing an insurance claim against their insurance
company because there was some damage done from a storm on the
ark. some water had gotten into the
ark and done some damage. Boy, that's a blasphemous ark,
isn't it? No, the Lord Jesus Christ himself
is that ark and he's pitched from within and without and none
of the judgment of God's reign. You know, Hollywood makes a movie
about Noah's ark and they show them in the ark with water coming
in and they're shoring up the holes and trying to plug up the
holes. I'm convinced that not, because that water was judgment.
Not a drop of that water got in that ark. It was pitched within
and without. And so it is the atoning work
of the Lord Jesus Christ by his shed blood on Calvary's cross
keeps all the wrath and judgment of God away from us. He suffered
the full fury of it and quenched that fire and put out that rain
once and for all. There's the light. We're looking
for a place of escape. We're looking for Christ. We're
not just looking for something positive to come out of something
negative. We're looking for a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. He said,
I am the light of the world. He's that light. David said this in 2 Samuel,
chapter 22, towards the end of his life. He says, he drew me
out of many waters and he delivered me from my stony enemy. They were too strong for me.
They were too strong for me. God delivered me. Oh, he's delivered
us from all our enemies. The scripture says the last enemy
that we must face is the enemy of death. And he delivered us
from that. He conquered the grave, he delivered us from that enemy. And so when he sends the storms, he attends that storm with a
token, a rainbow, the light of his glory and the light of his
grace. Second thing that the Old Testament
refers to as a token is circumcision. And circumcision was never, it
was a token. A token is a sign, it points
to something else. It's a symbol that points to
something else. And the Pharisees trusted in
their circumcision for the hope of their salvation. And Paul
said, if I still preach circumcision, why am I then being persecuted?
For then has the offense of the cross ceased. Men look for something
that they can do with their hands in order to gain favor with God
and earn their salvation. The circumcision was never a
means of salvation. It was a sign, it was a token
of something else. What is that something else?
It is the circumcision of the heart. That's the work of the spirit,
done without hands. So how do I know if I've been
circumcised in the heart? Well, you have the Spirit of
God and he has shown you clearly that everything about you outside
of Christ is nothing but sin. He will convict the world of
sin because they believe not on me and that the root problem
of your sin is your unbelief. You have the Holy Spirit of God,
Romans chapter eight, and he causes us to cry, Abba Father.
And this is the token, this is the evidence of the manifest
judgment of God that he's separated us and that he's made us worthy
of the kingdom of God. And that our righteousness is
in heaven. of righteousness because I go to my Father, that I have
no righteousness outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is all
my righteousness before God. Has the Holy Spirit taught you
that? Because you're not going to learn
that but by the Spirit of God. And when the Spirit of God teaches
you that, you just believe it. I don't have any righteousness
outside of Christ. And that the prince of this world has been
judged, that Satan has been destroyed. He's been judged. Now what that
just simply means is that what the Lord Jesus did on Calvary's
cross was successful. It was an accomplished work.
He actually finished what he went to do. And we believe that. Why? Because we have the earnest That's
what the scripture calls the Holy Spirit, the down payment
of the Spirit of God, the earnest of the Spirit. And we have that's the circumcision
of the heart. This is a work of grace done
in the heart. And the scripture says, we are the true circumcision,
which worship God in the spirit. I know that the only way that
I can worship God is not by outward performances. I'm not going to
worship God because I do something outwardly. Worship is something
that must be done in the heart. And so we worship God in the
spirit. The Lord told the woman at the
well that the father seeketh those who worship him in spirit
and in truth, according to the truth of God's word and in the
spirit of God and in their own spirit. That's the only place
worship can happen. We don't worship God because
we're sitting in a building or because we're doing something.
Worship has to be done in the heart by the spirit of God. We
are the true circumcision to worship God in the spirit and
rejoicing Christ Jesus. That's how I know I've been circumcised
in the heart. Circumcision is called a token.
This is a manifest token. Do you have this token? Because
this is the token that God has given to show the righteous judgment
of God for you and the righteous judgment of God that makes us
meet for the kingdom of God, makes us worthy of the kingdom
of God. We rejoice in Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus is all my
rejoicing. I have nothing to... He's my joy before God. He's
my life before God. I have no life outside of Him.
He is my shield and my exceeding great reward. Christ is all and
He's in all. I rejoice in Christ Jesus. And
what's the last phrase of that verse? and have no confidence
in the flesh. As tempted as I am to look to
fleshly means for my strength and for my peace, every time
I do, I lose confidence. I lose confidence. I can have
no confidence in the flesh. The Lord won't allow me. He won't
allow me to have any confidence in my flesh. My confidence is
only in Christ. And with him, I come boldly before
the throne of grace, confident that he has paved the way. So
circumcision is called a token. The bow in the air is called
a token. And finally, Exodus chapter 12, the blood
shall be to you for a token upon the houses where you are And
when I see the blood, I will pass over you and the plagues
shall not be upon you." And for the next 1,500 years,
the Jews shed innocent blood of rams and goats and bullock Bloody, bloody religion for 1,500
years. None of that blood ever took
away sin. It was a token. It was a token. It was always
a token. And a token is a sign, a symbol
that points to something else. What did that blood point to?
It pointed to the precious blood of the Lamb of God, who, when
he shed his blood, would put an end to that sacrificial system
and would be successful and effectual in putting away all the sins
of all of God's people of every generation. And God said, when
I see his blood, I'll pass over you. And the Lord Jesus took
his blood and he put it on that mercy seat in heaven. God Almighty
is looking at that blood to pass over us. That blood is not a
token. That blood is the real thing.
His blood is the substance, not the token. The token was that
Old Testament blood. His blood's the substance and
this is the sign. And we look to the same thing
that God the Father's looking to for the hope of having our
sins put away, covered, that God would graciously pass over
us when the death angel comes. What a hope, brethren. This is a manifest token of God's
righteous judgment and of you being made worthy of the kingdom
of God. God's given us so much, so much
evidence, so much hope. Our merciful Heavenly Father.
Thank you. For the revelation that you've
given us of thy dear son. Thank you for thy son. Thank
you for his accomplished work. Thank you for his shed blood.
Thank you for the. The unleavened unleavened bread
of his body that came down from heaven. And thank you for this
table or that we might look at these common elements of bread
and wine for what they are, tokens. Tokens that point us to the substance. The one who is seated, ever living
to make intercession for us, our high priest. Lord, give us
faith to look to him as we receive these elements in worship. We
ask it in Christ's name, amen. 158, 68, 168, let's stand together. Lord, I hear of showers of blessing,
Thou art scattering, full and free. Showers the thirsty land
refreshing, Let some drops now fall on me. Even me, even me,
let thy blessing fall on me. Pass me not, O tender Savior,
let me love and cling to Thee. I am longing for Thy favor whilst
Thou art calling, O call me. Even me, even me, let thy blessing
fall on me. Pass me not, O mighty spirit,
thou canst make the blind to see. Witnesser of Jesus' merit,
speak the word of power to me. Even me, even me, let Thy blessing
fall on me. Love of God so pure and changeless,
blood of Christ so rich and free. Grace of God so strong and boundless,
magnify them all in me. Even me, even me, let Thy blessing
fall on me. Pass me not thy lost ones bringing,
bind my heart, O Lord, to thee. While the streams of life are
springing, blessing others, O bless me. Even me, even me, let thy
blessing fall on me. If you'll be seated now, we'll
turn in this spiral bound hymnal. We'll sing number 17.