That's what I was trying to say
the first hour, what we just sang. Let's open our Bibles together
to Psalm 50. Psalm 50. Don Williams was scheduled to
do scripture reading this morning, and he called me early this morning.
And most of you know, he's going through treatments for cancer. He's having a difficult time
and wasn't able to make it today. So I want to be sure to pray
for Don. Psalm 50. The mighty God, even the Lord,
hath spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun unto
the going down thereof. Everywhere the sun Shined belongs
to the Lord. Out of Zion, now Zion, Jerusalem,
and Bethlehem are used in the Bible to describe the church. Out of Zion, the perfection of
beauty God hath shined. Isn't that our hope this morning? The Lord will shine the light
of his grace in the hearts of his people, show forth his glory,
out of Zion. Our God shall come and shall
not keep silent. A fire shall devour before him
and it shall be very tempestuous round about him. This is the fire of God's wrath
that fell on Christ on Calvary's cross as our sin bearer. It's
also the fiery trials and troubles that the Lord sends into our
lives to burn off the dross and to purify our faith. He shall call to the heavens
from above and to the earth that he may judge his people. Gather
my saints together unto me, those that have made a covenant with
me by sacrifice. covenant relationship that we
have with God is made by the sacrifice that Christ made. And the heaven shall declare
his righteousness for God is judge himself. Judge me in Christ. Oh Lord,
don't. Our God does not sacrifice his
justice to save. He is just and the justifier
of them that believe. And God's people don't want him
to put aside his justice or don't sacrifice your justice for my
salvation, but pour out the full fury of your wrath on the justifier
for me. Hear, O my people, and I will
speak, O Israel, and I will testify against thee. I am God, even
thy God. I will not reprove thee for thy
sacrifices or thy burnt offerings to have been continually before
me. I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he goats out
of thy folds. For every beast of the field
is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all
the fowls of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the fields
are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee, for the world
is mine, and the fullness thereof. Well, I eat the flesh of bulls,
and drink the blood of goats." We don't make animal sacrifices,
but men do the same thing when they try to approach God through
some sacrifice that they've made, whatever it might be. Here's the sacrifices of God.
Verse 14, offer unto God thanksgiving, and pay thy vow unto the Most
High. Call upon me in the day of trouble. I will deliver thee,
and thou shalt glorify me. That's the essence and the nature
of faith. It gives to Christ all the glory
when he speaks. Our Heavenly Father, thank you
for speaking to our hearts. Thank you for the effectual call
of thy spirit. Thank you for the gift of faith.
Thank you for the perfect work of redemption. Thank you for
the putting away of the sins of thy people. Thank you, Father,
that we have an advocate, Jesus Christ, the righteous one, whoever
lives to make intercession for us. Lord, all of our praise and
all of our thanksgiving goes to thee. For truly, Lord, had thou not called us and saved
us, we never would have called on thee. Lord, we thank you for our brethren,
the fellowship that you give to your children in the faith. We thank you this morning, especially
for our brother Don and for all the encouragement he's been to
us. And Lord, place your hand of healing upon him and give
him physical strength. And most importantly, Lord, pray
that you would draw his heart close to thee and that he would
find comfort in this time of trial, that that which is unsettled
and ungrounded would be found grounded and settled in the hope
of the gospel of Christ. For it's in his name we pray,
amen. We'll now stand and sing the
hymn on the back of the bulletin. To thy temple we repair, Lord
we love to worship there. There within the veil we meet,
Thee upon the mercy seat. While thy glorious name is sung,
tune our lips, unloose our tongues. Then our joyful souls shall bless
thee, the Lord, our righteousness. While to thee our prayers ascend,
let thine ear in love attend. Hear us when thy spirit pleads,
hear for Jesus intercedes. still have your bulletin in your
hand. If you'll open it up and notice on the bottom of the inside
left that Christmas and New Year's fall on Sunday. As you know,
we will have one service both of those Sundays at 11. So you
can plan accordingly. Will you open your Bibles with
me to the book of Boaz, the book of Ruth. Titles of these books
are not inspired. The text is, I like thinking
about this book as the book of Boaz. We've had several weeks
now where we've been looking at Ruth and Naomi and Boaz was
introduced last week. The title of the message this
morning is Behold Boaz. Behold Boaz. And that's just another way of
saying, look to Christ. Look on him. The brazen serpent in the wilderness. Look and live. Those who've been
stung by the fiery serpent of sin. Look, look, behold. Notice what he's become for you. The Lord Jesus Christ, our sin
bearer. That's why he was a brazen serpent,
you understand that. The serpent, I was watching a
documentary recently on TV and they were talking about the,
the serpent in all the different cultures of the world. And they
were trying to figure out where did men get this idea of a serpent
from? And they concluded that they
got it from the comets in the sky. And no, it all goes all
the way back to the garden, doesn't it? The serpent, Satan, sin,
and death. And, That's why our Lord was
fashioned as a brazen serpent on a pole. And he became God
made him who knew no sin himself to be made sin that we might
be made the righteousness of God in him. All the sins of all
of God's people were born in the body of Christ on Calvary's
cross. And the evidence that he died
for you is that you've got no place else to go. You find yourself
looking in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ for all the hope
of your salvation, all the forgiveness of your sin. Ruth. Ruth's name means friendship. We saw last Sunday that Ruth
was a Moabitist. She was a pagan. Moab was the offspring of the
incestuous relationship that Lot had with his daughter. Moab
and Ammon were those two babies that were born and became the
fathers of these pagan nations that were always a problem for
Israel. And Ruth, a picture of us, came
out of Moab. We see two different things here.
We see that how our God takes something as evil as what Lot
did and bring something good out of it. And we see something about our
own nature, that we are pagan by birth. And now her name translated
means friendship. And I love what the scripture
says that God spoke with Moses face to face as a man does with
a friend. I want to be a friend of God.
The Lord said, I call you no longer. I call you my servant
for a servant has no idea what his master do it, but I call
you my friends. Greater love hath no man than
this, that he lay down his life for his friends. I want God to
speak to me face to face as a man does with his friends. I want
to identify with Ruth in this story. She represents all of
the people of God. We saw last Sunday that she has
been reduced to gleaning and how It's a picture of how God's
people glean the grains of his gospel and his grace, the bread
of life and the Lord Jesus Christ, and he becomes their sustenance. But remember, Ruth now is going
to marry Boaz, and Boaz and Ruth are going to give birth to a
child by the name of Obed, and Obed's going to give birth to
a child by the name of Jesse, and Jesse's going to give birth
to a child by the name of David. and Ruth is going to find herself
in the very lineage, and she's mentioned in the book of Matthew,
she's in the lineage of the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to be in
His lineage, don't you? And there's a sense in which
in this birth, in this union with Christ, You know, once Ruth married Boaz,
she never had to glean the fields again. She had plenty. Boaz was a mighty man of wealth,
the scripture says. And though in one sense we're
always gleaning, in another sense we sit at the table of plenty. And our Lord, our kinsman redeemer,
provides for us everything in himself. that we need in order
to stand in the presence of a holy God. What a gospel story. The scripture
says that her hap had just so happened. We know what that means. God's people don't talk about
chance or luck. There's no such thing. No such
thing. It all happens in the good providence
of God. And in God's providence, he led
Ruth to the field of Boaz, to the field of Boaz. And here she
is gleaning in a man's field, who, as I said, was a mighty
man of wealth, whose name also means strength and fleekness.
And so the Lord Jesus Christ, in all of his strength, In all
of His strength, He bore the full wrath of God. He bore the
full shame of our sin. And in His fleetness, in His
quickness, He put them away by the sacrifice of Himself on Calvary's
cross. Four things I want you to see
about Boaz in our text. Behold Boaz. Behold Boaz. Look, that's what that word behold
means. When Job finally heard from the
Lord, Job, the man who tried to justify himself, Job, the
man who wanted to present his innocence before God. He said,
just let me come before thy throne and I'll prove to you I'm not
deserving of this. When Job finally saw the Lord
for who he was, after the Lord had spoken, what did Job say?
Behold. Behold. Oh, I see something I
never saw before. I am vile. I am vile. I am a sinner. And so this word
behold means to see, it means to look, it means to, to, to
give one's undivided attention. Notice with me in verse four,
and behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem. Now, obviously, Bethlehem being
the house of bread, Bethlehem, Judah, the place of rejoicing,
Jerusalem, and Zion are all are all used in God's word to
describe the church. And so Boaz's field, I'm sure
was on the outskirts of town somewhere. And behold, now Boaz
is going to come from Bethlehem. He lived in Bethlehem. He lived
in the city. Even as the Lord Jesus Christ,
our kinsman redeemer, the fleetness and strength of our salvation,
inhabits the praise of his people. He walks among the candlesticks.
This, the scripture says, is his place of habitation. Where two or three are gathered
together in my name, there I am in the midst of them. Bethlehem
is his house. Ezra chapter 7 verse 15 says,
the God of Israel, whose habitation is in Jerusalem, the city of
peace. Oh, we need to be reminded of
that, don't we? We come to this place, we're coming in the Lord's
house. When you visit a friend's home,
you don't just go in there and start taking over things. No,
you wait to be given permission for everything that you do. And
if there's something you need to do, you ask permission for
it. This is the Lord's house. And we could be reminded that
we come into this place. Boaz came out of Bethlehem. Jerusalem is his habitation.
Psalm 132 verse 13, for the Lord hath chosen Zion. He hath desired Zion for his
habitation. The Lord said, he told David,
he said, how are you going to build a house for me? The heavens
can't contain my glory. You don't build me a house of
brick and mortar. No, this is my house and I'll
build it. Upon this rock, I'll build my
church. The gates of hell shall not prevail
against it. It's a spiritual work that only
he can do. And if the Lord build not the
house, the laborers labor in vain. We labor in vain. Boaz came out of Bethlehem, and
he still does. Turn with me to Ephesians chapter
two. Ephesians chapter two. Our kinsman redeemer, the strength
of our salvation, the quickness of our redemption, still coming
out of Bethlehem. Ephesians chapter 2, look with
me at verse 19. Now, therefore, you are no more
strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints
and of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation
of the apostles and prophets. The apostles and prophets, that's
the New Testament and the Old Testament, and in the Volume
of the book, it is spoken of him. So the Lord Jesus Christ
is that foundation stone on which the house of God is built. And
we are like Peter. Peter's name means a little building
block, a little building stone built upon that foundation, fitly
joined together. And the way they built buildings
back then, I mean, some of the old walls of the temples of ancient
times are still standing. There's no mortar in them. The
stones are each chiseled to fitly join together. You are built, verse 20, upon
the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself
being the chief cornerstone in whom all the building fitly joined
together groweth unto the holy temple of the Lord, in whom you
also are built together for a habitation of God through the spirit. This
is the place where Boaz lives. You say, well, wait a minute,
we've got to limit God. Is He not omnipresent? This is
the place where He shows forth His glory. This is the place
where He shows forth His grace. Through the preaching of the
gospel and the fellowship of the saints, having been fitly
joined together, Boaz came out of Bethlehem. And our Boaz is
still coming out of Bethlehem. You know that, don't you, brethren?
You've listened to a lot of voices this week. You've seen a lot
of things this week. Never heard anyone talk about
the Lord Jesus Christ like He's spoken of here, have you? Never heard anyone lift Him up
like He's lifted up here. No, the world knows nothing of
this. This is the place where the Lord gathers His saints together,
fitly joins them together in faith, and shows forth His glory
and His grace in salvation. How many times do we read in
the book of Psalms, the Lord has come out of Zion? He's still coming out of Zion. Oh, if we could, anticipate Him
more than we do. I'm personally ashamed and convicted
about how little I anticipate the Lord revealing Himself when
we gather together. But here's what He said. Here's
His Word. Here's His promise. Pray that we will believe it
and remember it. You know, and here's the other
truth about that. If our Boaz is coming out of
Bethlehem, that's the reason why we come here, to meet him.
And if we come for any other reason, or we enjoy the fellowship
that we have together, but if If social fellowshipping is the
reason why a person comes to this place, I promise you, you
will be offended eventually, and more than likely by me, and
you'll quit because that need is no longer being met. But if
we come to this place, because this is the place where the Lord
has promised to meet with us, where His gospel is preached,
if this is the place where our Boaz is coming out of the house
of bread, out of Zion, out of the city of peace, Jerusalem,
and showing forth His glory, then if Christ is preached, we'll
keep coming regardless of whatever other needs and expectations
are not being fulfilled. Amen? Behold Boaz. Notice in our texts, go back
with me to Ruth chapter two. And behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem
and said to the reapers, The Lord be with you. And they
answered him, the Lord bless thee. There is always a blessing from
God before any Moabitist is saved. Boaz said to the reapers, the
Lord be with thee. I think about what Moses said
in Exodus chapter 33. If I could paraphrase it, he
said, Lord, if you don't go with us, don't move us from this spot. Let me show you that passage,
Exodus chapter 33. We'll see exactly how the Lord
said it. Exodus 33, yes. Now, the Lord had already told
the children of Israel that he was not going to go with them
because they were a obstinate and stiff-necked people. He said,
he warned Moses, he said, I'm just going to leave these people.
I'm going to kill them all and start over with you. And now
Moses, as a picture of Christ, is interceding for the Israelites. And look at verse 15 of Exodus
33. And Moses said unto the Lord,
if thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence. Lord,
if you're not going to go with us, then don't let us take another
step. For wherein shall it be known
here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? Is
it not that thou goest with us? So shall we be separated, I and
thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the
earth. Lord, the only thing that makes us different from everybody
else is that you're with us. It's the only thing that differs
us. In every other way, we're so much like the rest of the
world. except God's with us. He's blessed
us. The Lord has said to the reapers,
the Lord be with thee, be with thee. And look at verse 18. And the Lord said, Moses said,
I'm sorry, verse 17. And the Lord said unto Moses,
I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken, for thou hast
found grace in my sight. And I know thee by name. And
Moses said, oh, I beseech thee, Lord, show me thy glory. Show
me thy glory. And the Lord said, I'll cause
my goodness to pass before thee. I'm going to put you in the cleft
of the rock. I'm going to cover you with my hand. I'm going to
cause my goodness to pass. The Lord Jesus Christ is that
goodness. Why callest thou me good? For
there's none good but God. Moses said, Lord, if you're going
to go with us, Show us your glory. Show us Christ. Reveal to us
our Boaz, our kinsman redeemer. Give us faith to look to him
and to rejoice in him and to rest the hope of our salvation
in him, to believe upon him. And the Lord said, because you
found grace in my sight, therefore I'll do this thing for thee.
So the Lord going with us, is for the purpose of showing forth
His glory, distinguishing His people from all the people of
the world, making them to differ. The Lord be with thee. Isn't
that what Boaz said? That's what you and I need. We need to cry with Moses, Lord,
if you're not gonna be with me, carry me not up hence. I'm here
to tell you, there's not a man that's ever been called to preach
the gospel who doesn't cry that prayer every time he stands behind
this pulpit. Lord, if you're not gonna go
with me, don't let me get up there. Don't let me speak. And this is every believer's
cry. And the Lord said, because you found grace in my sight.
How do we find grace in thy sight? By the goodness of God, the one
who is your rock, the one in whom you hide and you find acceptance,
the Lord be with thee. Matthew chapter 28, just before
our Lord ascended back into glory, he said to the disciples, and
he says to you and me, power has been given unto me in heaven
and in earth I possess all authority all power therefore therefore
you go and make disciples of all nations teaching them baptizing
them and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I've commanded
you and lo I am with you always even into the end of the earth
there's our There's our hope that the Lord's with us. It's
his promise. He said, you go. And notice that the command to
go and to preach the gospel and to make disciples and your command
to believe is sandwiched between two glorious truths. All power
is given unto me and lo, I go with you always, even unto the
end of the earth. So we go looking to the Lord Jesus Christ for
all our power. and the promise that he will
not leave us nor forsake us. Boaz came out of Bethlehem. The Lord Jesus Christ, our kinsman
redeemer, is still coming out of Bethlehem. Behold, Boaz. And notice what they said in
response to him. He says, the Lord be with you
in verse four. And they said, the Lord bless
thee. The Lord honor thee. The Lord
give to you all the glory and all the praise and all the credit.
We bow before you. So the Lord here is coming out
of Bethlehem saying, the Lord bless you, the Lord be with you.
And we say, and the Lord bless you. The Lord bless you. Notice in verse five, behold
Boaz. Here's the truth of the gospel,
brethren. We come here to hear from the
voice of God. We don't come to this place to
be entertained. We don't come to this place to
just enjoy the fellowship of one with the other. We come to
this place because this is the house of God. This is the place
where He has promised to meet with His people. This is Bethlehem. This is the place where Boaz
comes out of. And there's no substitute for
it anywhere else. Then said Boaz in verse five,
unto his servant that was set over the reapers.
Whose damsel is this? And we can see this servant.
This is his foreman who's over all the reapers. The reapers
are those who are declaring the gospel. And is this not the spirit
of God? The, The one who's over all the
reapers, the one to whom the reapers cry out to give them
His grace and His power. And so Boaz says to the servant,
who is this damsel? I want you to notice that the
Lord Jesus Christ always takes notice of us before we take notice
of Him. Always works that way. We just sang, "'Tis not that
I did choose thee, for Lord, that could not be. My heart would still refuse thee,
had thou not chosen me." When Boaz comes out of Bethlehem,
he takes notice of his elect, and he sees them long before
they see him. There's our hope. I love the
story of Nathaniel going to his brother who is under the fig
tree. And Nathanael says, we've come,
we found the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. And Philip said, what
good thing could come out of Nazareth? And Nathanael said,
come and see, come and see. And so Nathanael takes his brother
to the Lord Jesus and the Lord sees Philip and he says, an Israelite
indeed, in whom there is no guile. He identifies Philip as a child
of God, an elect child of God. The guile is the deceitfulness
and lies of man-made, self-righteous, freewill religion. And Philip
had been underneath the fig tree praying, confessing to God that
he needed God's grace, he needed God's mercy. And Philip said
to him, he said, how do you know me? And the Lord said, when thou
was under the fig tree, I saw thee. And Philip said, oh, Lord. He bowed at his feet. When Daniel
was praying for the sins of Israel and asking the Lord to restore
them back to Jerusalem, he prayed, the scripture says, for 14 days. And when the Lord answered him
after 14 days, the Lord said, from the very day that thou began
to seek my face, I heard thee. I heard thee. Daniel, I heard
you before you ever heard from me. I saw you before you ever
saw me. That's why in a wedding, the
exchanging of vows, the man always exchanges his vows first. Why? Because that's Christ and his
church. And he made a covenant promise. To his father in eternity
past, long before we had any interest in God, long before
we were under the fig tree praying, long before we ever came to a
place where we could hear his voice, he saw us. Boaz sees Ruth before Ruth ever
knew who he was. when the Lord Jesus Christ, when
the disciples wanted the Lord traveling from Galilee down to
Jerusalem, the Jews would go around Samaria because they considered
the people there to be unclean and they didn't want to be. And
so the disciples are mapping their trip around Samaria. And
the Lord said, oh no, I must needs go through Samaria. Tomorrow at noon, there's going
to be a woman at the well that I've known in the covenant of
grace from eternity past. And we have an appointed meeting
and I must needs go through there. She'd been married five times
and the man she's living with now is not her husband. Her life
is a mess. But I've known her for all eternity.
And I see her even now before she sees me, before she has any
idea who I am. I must needs go through Samaria.
Oh, the Lord sees his children long before they see him. And
if it wasn't so, we would never see him. We love him only because
he first loved us. We come to Him only because He
comes to us. We turn to Him only because He
turns us. We hear His voice only because
He calls out to us. If our salvation was in any way
dependent upon us to initiate it or to make any contribution
to it, we would never come. Boaz says to his servant, who
is that damsel? He takes notice of her before
she ever took notice of him. Election must be true. Otherwise, no one would be saved. Now think about this, because
people say, well, election, that's not fair. Why would God choose
some and not others? If it wasn't for election, no
one would be saved. Election is the only door to
heaven. It's the only door to heaven.
Without election, there's none of us would come to God. None
of us would have. If Boaz didn't see Ruth, Ruth
would go on gleaning and go back and share her scraps with Naomi. And continue on, Boaz took notice
of her. Nothing's changed. Behold, Boaz,
he comes out of Bethlehem and he takes notice of his people
and he blesses his reapers. He declares to them, the Lord
be with thee. And they in return, bless him,
give to him all the glory. And then he takes notice. Verse six, and the servant that was set
over the reapers answered and said, it is the Moabitess damsel
that came back with Naomi out of the country of Moab. The only way that Ruth could
be saved is for the curse that God had pronounced on Moab to
be fulfilled. When the children of Israel were
coming out of Egypt, The Moabites, Moses had to go through Moab,
and Moses met with the chief of Moab and said, we need to
go through your land, and we won't touch any of your property,
we won't disturb anything, but we just need to get through here,
and the Moabites wouldn't let him through. And as a result,
God pronounced a curse on Moab. Let me show you that. Deuteronomy
chapter 23. Verse three, the Amorites, you
remember, Ammon and Moab were the two offspring of Lot and
his two daughters. And now they are the enemies
of Israel. But within this cursed nation,
there is a damsel by the name of Ruth, who's going to be made
friends with God. She's going to meet her Boaz
coming out of Bethlehem. He's going to redeem her. Verse three, this is God's curse
back 300 years before the time of Ruth. An Amorite or Moabite shall not
enter into the congregation of the Lord Even to their tenth
generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the
Lord forever, because they met you not with bread and water
in the way when you came forth out of Egypt, and because they
hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor of Pether of Mesopotamia
to curse thee." So God pronounced a curse on Moab for not entertaining
the children of Israel and providing for them bread and water as they
passed through from Egypt. And that curse was to last 10
generations. Now, what is the number 10? It's
the number of the law, isn't it? It's the number of the law. Those, we know that Ruth had
to be after those 10 generations were fulfilled. Perhaps they
had just been fulfilled. And now, because God said, no
Moabite shall come into the children of Israel for 10 generations. That was God's curse on Moab. God's curse on you and me. is the law. The wrath of God, the justice
of God, is because of our inability to
keep God's law. The law of God doesn't save anyone.
The law of God cannot save. Only thing the law of God can
do is curse us. We stand in condemnation, in
judgment by the law. And those 10 generations must
be fulfilled. The curse must be satisfied before
a Moabitist can be saved. Now the scripture says, cursed
is everyone that hangeth upon a tree. The Lord Jesus Christ
was cursed by the law of God for us. It was the law of God
that killed the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's cross. When God's
holy law saw our sin on the Lord Jesus Christ, our sin bearer,
our substitute, the law of God had no choice but to exercise
its justice and its curse. It had to kill him. The curse had to be fulfilled
before anyone out of Moab could be saved. 10 generations, and
it has been, brethren. You remember Absalom, David's son, Absalom. Abba, father, shalom, peace. Absalom, my father is peace. Speaking of David, but Absalom
in one sense is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. How did Absalom
die? His hair, which is a picture
of his glory, the glory of Christ, was caught in the bow of a tree.
And when And when David's men saw him hanging there, suspended
between the heavens and the earth, the scripture says they came
and they lanced him through with ten spears. Ten spears. What a picture. A picture of
our Savior hanging on Calvary's cross, being lanced through with
the 10 spears of God's holy law to fulfill the law. Christ is
the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. Men
go about trying to establish their own righteousness, being
ignorant of God's righteousness. They think, well, if I just do
my best to keep the law, somehow God will credit that to me. No,
he won't. The 10 generations of curse must
be fulfilled before any Moabitess can be saved. And that's exactly
what the Lord Jesus Christ did. He's our Boaz. He came out of
Bethlehem. He pronounced a blessing on the
reapers. He took notice and they, he said, the Lord be with thee. He gave him his presence and
the reapers blessed him. He took notice of Ruth long before
she took notice of him. And he satisfied the fulfillment
of that curse so that a Moabitess could be saved. Our heavenly father. Thank you for Christ. Thank you for taking notice of
us even when we take no notice of thee. Thank you for being pierced through
with the sword of God's justice to satisfy the demands of God's
law. Thank you that we are not under
the law, we're under grace. Thank you for your salvation. We pray that you would give us
faith to rest our hope in Christ. Forgive us for our unbelief. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Adam. 268, 268. Let's stand together. Number 268. How firm a foundation, ye saints
of the Lord, is laid for your faith in his excellent word. What more can he say than to
you he hath said, to you who for Jesus have fled. Fear not, I am with thee, O be
not dismayed, for I am thy God, I will still give thee aid. I'll strengthen thee, help thee,
and cause thee to stand, upheld by my gracious, omnipotent hand. When through the deep waters
I call thee to go, the rivers of woe shall not thee overflow. For I will be with thee thy troubles
to bless and sanctify too. by deepest distress. When through fiery trials thy
pathway shall lie, My grace all-sufficient shall be thy supply. The flame shall not hurt thee,
I only design Thy dross to consume. and thy gold to refine. The soul that on Jesus hath leaned
for repose, I will not, I will not desert to his foes. That soul, though all hell, should
endeavor to shake, I'll never, no, never, no, never forsake. We'll be seated for this second
hymnal, or hymn, sorry, and let's just turn back a couple pages
to 222. 222. There is a fountain filled with
blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged that flood. Lose all their guilty stains. Lose all their guilty stains. Lose all their guilty stains. And sinners plunged beneath that
flood Lose all their guilty stains The dying thief rejoiced to see
that fountain in his day. And there may I, though vile
as he, wash all my sins away. Wash all my sins away. Wash all my sins away. And there may I, though vile
as he, wash all my sins away. Dear dying lamb, thy precious
blood shall never lose its power. Till all the ransomed church
of God be safe to sin no more. Be safe to sin no more Be safe
to sin no more Till all the ransomed Church of God Be safe to sin
no more E'er since, by faith, I saw the stream Thy flowing
wounds supply. Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die. And shall be till I die And shall
be till I die Redeeming love has been my theme And shall be
till I die When this poor lisping, stammering tongue Lies silent
in the grave Then in a nobler, sweeter song I'll sing my power
to save I'll sing thy power to save. I'll sing thy power to
save. Then in a nobler, sweeter song,
I'll sing thy power to save.