Dark the stain that soiled man's
nature Long the distance that he fell Far removed from hope
and heaven Into deep despair and hell But there was a fountain
open And the blood of God's own Son Purifies the soul and reaches
Deeper than the stain has gone Praise the Lord for full salvation
God still reigns upon His throne And I know the blood still reaches
Deeper than the stain has gone Conscious of the deep pollution
Sinners wander in the night Though they hear the shepherd calling
They still fear to face the light This the blessed consolation
That can melt the heart of stone That sweet balm of Gilead reaches
Deeper than the stain has gone Praise the Lord for full salvation
God still reigns upon His throne And I know the blood still reaches
Deeper than the stain has gone All unworthy we who've wandered
And our eyes are wet with tears As we think of love that sought
us Through the weary, wasted years Yet we walk the holy highway
Walking by God's grace alone Knowing Calvary's fountain reaches
Deeper than the stain has gone Praise the Lord for full salvation
God still reigns upon His throne And I know the blood still reaches
Deeper than the stain has gone When with holy choirs we're standing
In the presence of the King And our souls are lost in wonder
While the white-robed choirs sing Then we'll praise the name
of Jesus With the millions round the throne Praise Him for the
power that reaches Deeper than the stain has gone Praise the Lord for full salvation
God still reigns upon His throne And I know the blood still reaches
Deeper than the stain has gone I remember when I first heard
that hymn and what a blessing it was to me then, and it was
more blessing to me today. More I understand of my own sin
and how deep the stain of it goes, how blood of Christ is
able to make that which is red like crimson white as snow. What a blessing. What a hope.
Thank you, Adam. We're gonna be in Judges chapter
three this morning, this hour, if you'd like to turn with me
there in your Bibles, Judges chapter three. I've titled this message, A Savior
for Sinners. A Savior for Sinners. You're here this morning, and
you've enjoyed the work of the Holy Spirit, you've profited
from that, you've benefited from that to make you to be a sinner. That's what he does. Then I hope
that you'll find great comfort in our passage this morning from
Judges chapter three. We want to begin reading in verse
8, and you don't have to be but a casual observer of history
to know that it repeats itself. And if you can't see that in
world history, surely you see that in your own history. The
message here is that the people sinned. God made them suffer the consequences
of their sin. The people cried out to God.
God sent them a deliverer. And then they had rest. And then
the people sinned. God made them to suffer the consequences
of those sin. And they cried out for mercy.
And God sent them a deliverer. and they found rest. And that
history is repeated over and over and over again in the Bible
and in my life. And if you have any understanding
in your life. Truly, history repeats itself. We have Here in our text, the
first of 12 judges that the Lord tells us about in the book of
Judges. Each one of them in a very unique
way represent our deliverer. This word deliverer that we're
gonna see in our text is the word Savior. And each one of
them represent the Lord Jesus Christ in a very special and
unique way. And yet, as soon as As soon as
the Savior dies, the children of Israel go back to their same
old sin. And then they find themselves
under the bondage of the inhabitants of the land,
and they cry out to God to deliver them, and God sends them another
deliverer. And they enjoy rest for a period of time until the
cycle repeats itself. Othniel is the name of this first
of 12 judges, the last judge being Samson. This is the period
of time in the history of Israel between Joshua, who led the children
of Israel into the promised land, Joshua has now died, and the
time when the children of Israel cry out to God for a king. We
want to be like other nations, we want a king. And God gives
them Saul. And then, of course, David comes,
and Solomon, and the period of the kings exist after that. But this is that 400 years time
between the taking of the promised land and the giving of the kings.
Othniel being the first of the 12 judges. Verse eight, therefore
the anger, verse seven, and the children of Israel did evil in
the sight of the Lord and forgot the Lord their God and served
Balaam and the groves. Therefore, the anger of the Lord
was hot against Israel and he sold them into the hand of Chushan
Rishethirim, king of Mesopotamia. And the children of Israel served
Chushan Rishethirim eight years. And when the children of Israel
cried unto the Lord, The Lord raised up a savior, a deliverer,
to the children of Israel, who delivered them, even Othniel,
the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother. And the spirit of the
Lord came upon him, and he judged Israel and went out to war. And the Lord delivered Chushan
Rishishirim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand, into Othniel's
hand. And his hand prevailed against
Chushan Rishithirim. And the hand and the land had
rest 40 years. And Othniel, the son of Kenaz,
died. Who is the deliverer? Well, Othniel's
name, if you remember, means the Lion of God. And he went out, if you go to
Judges chapter 14, that story of Samson, you remember, The
scripture says, and the spirit of the Lord came upon Samson.
This is another time where God sends his Holy Spirit in an extraordinary
way to enable a man to do something that he wouldn't have been able
to do in his own strength. And the scripture says, he came
across a lion, a fearless lion, and he rent that lion with his
bare hands as if it was a kid, as if it was a small goat or
lamb. And then you remember he went
on to Timnah and the men of Timnah persecuted him. And he came back
and he found that the lion, the carcass of the lion was still
there. And inside the carcass, some bees had made a hive and Samson took the honey out
of that hive. And then he derived a riddle
from that. And the riddle went like this,
out of the eater came something sweet and out of the strong came
meat. Or out of the eater came meat
and out of the strong came something sweet. And the men of Timnah
were not able to solve that riddle. But like everything in scripture,
it speaks to us of the lion of the tribe of Judah, the Lord
Jesus Christ who hath prevailed. And out of the eater comes meat. The one to whom we must stand
in the day of judgment has given his own body as our meat. He said, my flesh, my perfect
life, my life of righteousness, my faithfulness before my father
is your meat indeed. And then over and over again,
the scripture refers to the word of God as being honey. The land
that flowed with milk and honey, that's where God has us right
now. Milk being our nourishment, as sincere as babes crave after
the sincere milk of the word of God. And as the honey is sweet
to the taste and bitter to the belly of our flesh, so the word
of God, is the honey that gives nourishment to our souls and
out of the strong came sweet. out of the Lord Jesus Christ,
who was strong enough to bear on his shoulders, like Samson,
the gates of hell and to bear in his body all the sins of his
people and to bear the sufferings of God's holy wrath for the judgment
of our sin, out of the strong comes sweet. So over again, we
see that Othniel here, points us to Christ, the one who is
the eater out from which comes meat, the one who is strong out
from which comes sweet, the one who hath prevailed. You remember
John when he weeps over the fact that there's no one able to open
the book because it was sealed with seven seals from within
and without and And the angel of the Lord says, weep not, John,
for the lion of the tribe of Judah, he hath prevailed. He's
able to open it. The strong, the strong man. Oh, he's prevailed as your savior. You and I need to be delivered.
We're not strong enough to stand against Satan. We don't have
the strength against our sin. We can't conquer death. We can't
do anything about hell. We are subject to all these things
unless God sends a deliverer to set us free. And that's exactly
what he's done in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our deliverer. Death, hell, the judgment of
sin, the power of Satan, the truth of the grave, All these
things he's conquered. Oh, what hope we have. That though
we, just like the children of Israel, did evil in the sight
of the Lord, and he puts us under the bondage of that sin, and
causes us to see that we're really slaves to sin. That's what we're
slaves to. This man's name, Chushan Rishethirub,
that's a mouthful. Look up the translation to it.
It means twice wicked blackness. Twice wicked blackness. That's
what his name translated means. What is the Lord telling me and
you? This man had taken for himself a name that was designed to intimidate
his enemies. When everybody heard that name,
oh, that's twice wicked blackness. He's going to, he's going to
overpower us. He's going to take us. There's
nothing we can do to defeat him. You see his, his name was designed
to set fear in the hearts of men. And the Lord sent this man
to conquer the children of Israel because of their sin. Oh, if we could see sin like
God. Well, we don't want to see it like God sees it. We wouldn't
be able to live with ourselves or show ourselves in public.
But here's what God's telling us about our sin. That it's twice
wicked blackness. That it's a lot worse than we
think it is. Someone says to me, preacher, you just don't
know what I've done. You just don't. I feel so bad.
I feel so guilty. And my response always to them
is, it's a whole lot worse than you think it is. You cannot see
your sin for what it is. You don't want to see your sin
for what it is. But what God says it is, is twice wicked blackness. This is the man who sets fear
in the hearts of God. We're afraid of our sin. We're
afraid of Satan. Lord, if you don't send Othniel,
if you don't send the Lion of God to conquer my sin and to
conquer Satan, I'll be prayed to him and I'll be cast into
utter darkness without any light, without any truth. Notice also that this Chushan
Rishetharim was the king of Mesopotamia. Now here again, you can look
this word up. The word Mesopotamia translated
means two rivers, two rivers. This is the place where Abraham
was brought out of, where the two rivers come together. What does this teach us? What
is a river? It's a source of life, isn't
it? How many rivers are there in Israel? One. Jordan River. How many rivers are there in
the book of Revelation flowing from the Lamb and from the throne
of God, which is clear as crystal and gives life to everyone in
heaven? One river. One river. But this man was king over a
land that had two rivers. And that's what sin does. Sin
offers life from two different options. You know, you can have
it this way or you can have it that way. What sin does is it
offers us life by our choice. We can choose between one river
or the other. You have an opportunity here.
It goes all the way back to the garden. When Satan said to Eve,
God knows in the day in which you eat of the fruit, that he's
forbidden the fruit of the knowledge of life and truth. He said, your
eyes are going to be open and you're going to become like God.
You're going to have the power of choice. There's one big lie
that everybody outside of Christ believes in this world. And that
is the man has a free will. Everybody believes that. I can
choose. What are they evidencing when
they say that, that they are under the control of, and I've
got to look at this name, Chushan Rishethirim, the king of Mesopotamia,
when they say that they have a free will to choose one way
or the other, all they're doing is giving testimony that they
are under the control of twice evil blackness. They are under
the control of their own sin and they don't know it. And the child of God says, Lord,
don't give me a choice. Shut me up to Christ. If it's up to me to choose one
way or the other, I will choose against God. I'll find another
river. I'll find another way to have
life. I'll find my works and my will and my wisdom. And Lord,
you're gonna have to shut me up to that one river that flows
clear as crystal from the throne of God. Here's where we all are
by nature. Every one of us by nature are
under the dominion of twice evil blackness, thinking that we can
choose between one river or the other. And when God makes you
to be a sinner, You know that coming to Christ is not a choice.
You know that it's not of him that willeth nor of him that
runneth. You know that you have no power in and of yourself to
believe upon God, that God must arrest you, that he must stop
you. He must put his nature in you
to cause you to believe. Now, we know that these things
in time Chronological time, they happen
simultaneously. Faith and regeneration happen
at the same time. But in the order of time, regeneration
must precede faith. The Lord has to breathe life
into our dead souls in order for us to be able to believe.
That's what I'm talking about being shut up to Christ. Lord,
I can't decide to believe so that I can have life. That's
the land of the two rivers. That's Mesopotamia, and there's
one king over that land, and he's twice evil blackness. But the land of the living has
one river coming out of it. And the child of God said, Lord,
thank you that you gave me a choice. Thank you that I didn't, I couldn't,
you brought me out of that land, just like he brought Abraham
This is the land of the Ur of the Chaldees, where the two rivers
come together. And God brought Abraham out of
that land and brought him into the land where there was one
river, the river of life. And that river, actually, the
river Jordan means to descend into death. And so in order to
have life, you have to die. Die to ourselves. Die to our
ability to choose God. Die to our free will. Die to
our choice. Die to the power that we think
we might have. We are dead in our trespasses
and sins. Isn't that what God says? Spiritually
dead. That means a dead man can't make
a choice? Go down to the cemetery this
afternoon and see if you can get somebody there to choose
one way or the other for you. No, they're not. They can't.
They're dead. That's the work of the Holy Spirit.
God makes you to be a sinner. You know, you don't have a choice
about this thing. You know that you're completely upon, you're
completely dependent upon God to do a work of grace in your
heart, to make you willing in the day of his power. And you
cry out for that. Lord, save me, save me. This is the picture. And notice
in our text in verse eight, they were sold into the hand. That's what sin does. Sin sells
us into the hand of twice evil blackness and puts us in the
land of the two rivers, makes us slaves. It's like the children of Israel
in Egypt became slave to the taskmasters of Egypt. Could never
measure up to the quota that they required. Here we are. Now,
here's the truth. All men are slaves. Every single person I'm looking
at right now I know is a slave. You say, well, I'm not a slave.
I'm so sorry. For you to say that means that
you're a slave to sin and you don't know it. Because the child
of God's gonna say, amen, God's made me a slave to Christ. And
that's just the simplest way I can say it. You're a slave
right now. You're either a slave to sin
or you're a slave to Christ. Either you have no power or ability
to believe on God because sin has held you captive or God has set you free. made
you to bow to the Lord Jesus Christ as your master. Now that's true of every person
in this world. Notice, they were sold into the
hand of twice evil blackness, the king of the two rivers, and
the children served him for eight years. Romans chapter six, verse six
says, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Christ,
that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we
should not serve sin. For you are not under the dominion
of sin. Sin has not held you captive
anymore so that you are blinded by it and cannot believe on him. And the sin of your flesh, this
whole chapter, I mentioned this in the first hour, read Romans
chapter eight. It's talking about the ministry
of the Holy Spirit restraining our sinful nature from being
fulfilled. And every believer is interested
in that. And I'll say this again this hour, just because God the
Holy Spirit restrains the lust of our flesh from being fulfilled
doesn't make us any less sinful. Matter of fact, it makes us more
sinful. We see more and more of it, don't we? And we cry out
a little louder, Lord, save me. We don't stand Looking down our
self-righteous nose at other men thinking, well, I would never
do that. We know that if the Lord didn't restrain us, we'd
do anything. We'd do anything. Here's what our Lord said. There was a time when you serve
sin. Ephesians, Ephesians chapter one, wherein in times past you
walked according to the course of this world. But God, who is rich in mercy,
wherewith he has loved us. Oh, for by grace are you saved
through faith. What hope. Here's what this is a picture
of. The natural man, me and you. We sinned against God. God sells
us. into the hand of twice evil blackness
and gives us the idea that we think we can save ourselves by
making a choice between one river or the other. And then, and then
eight years goes by. This is in the eighth year. Numbers
are important in the Bible. They are. The number three, God
the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, three years
of ministry, the three days of death. The number three is the
number for perfection in the Bible. The number five is the number
for grace. We have Benjamin receiving five
times the portion of his brothers. We have David with his five stones.
The number five is the number for grace, five loaves and five
fishes. The Lord multiplied to feed 5,000. Five loaves and three fishes
to feed 5,000. The number six is the number for man, created
on the sixth day. And the number for man, 666 in
the Bible. And the number seven is the number
of completeness and rest. So what's the significance of
the eight? What happens here at eight? Well, eight is the
number for God creating something new. It was eight souls saved in the
ark. On the eighth day of life, the
male child was to be circumcised. And eight days later, after the
resurrection, The scripture says that when Thomas was there in
the upper room, the Lord appeared unto them. I'm gonna do something
new for you on the eighth day. A is a number for renewal, for
God doing a new work in the lives of his people. Turn with me to
Isaiah chapter 43. Isaiah 43. They've served twice evil blackness
in the land of two rivers for seven years. They've completed
their service in the time of God, when it pleased God who
separated me from my mother's womb. Know what Paul said? To
reveal Christ in me. Show his grace towards me. It's
been finished now. Now I'm going to do a new work.
Look at, look at Isaiah chapter 43 and we'll begin reading at
verse 18. Remember ye not the former things, neither consider
the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing. Now it shall spring forth. Shall you not know it? I will
even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. And so we read of the new Jerusalem
coming down from heaven and we read of the new commandment that
I've given unto you and the new song and the new covenant. These
are all the renewals of God's grace towards sinners. When God
delivers us from twice evil blackness and causes us to see that our
salvation has nothing to do with our choice or our works, He causes
us to believe that it's not of him that willeth, nor of him
that worketh or runneth. It is of God that showeth mercy.
I'm gonna do a new work in you. It's called the new birth. It's God fulfilling his purpose
and sending his deliverer, his savior to bring us forth. out of sin. When will this happen? Well,
go back with me to our text. Verse nine, and when the children
of Israel cried, cried. See, a natural man thinks I can
fix this problem. I can stop doing this and start
doing that. And the natural man will turn
over a new leaf and he'll get religious and he'll change his
behavior and he'll reform his life and he'll think, okay, I'm
right with God now. That's the work of the natural
man. And God shows you that you're under the bondage of twice evil
blackness. and that you don't have a choice
about this salvation, you've got nothing to do but cry. Lord,
save me. Lord, have mercy upon me. And it doesn't matter what other
men might say about you. Oh, blind Bartimaeus, don't you
know that you're embarrassing yourself and you're making everybody
around here just uncomfortable? And he cried all the louder.
Oh, son of David, have mercy upon me. He wasn't deterred by
the opinions of men and neither will you be or I will be. We'll
find ourselves with no place else to go. Here's the picture of salvation
and this history. Is this your history? You know,
I love thinking about the fact that my history is really his
story and that his life is my history before God. But here's
my history in this world. It just keeps repeating itself. Sin rears its ugly head. God
enables me to be taken captive by it and to see that I have
no choice about it. And then I cry out to him and
he sends a deliverer. And he gives me rest again and
again and again. And it just keeps repeating itself. How tender, how compassionate
our Lord is to put this cry in our hearts. And he knows the
cry of his children. Mothers, you know the cry of
your small child. You know when it's a feigned
cry, and you know when it's a real cry. And if it's a real cry,
you're gonna drop everything you're doing and flee to, you'll
run to them and do everything you can to save them, whatever
it is they're crying about. And if you being evil know how
to give good gifts unto your children, how much more, how
much more does your heavenly father give good gifts to them,
give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him? Oh, he's, as a
father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that
fear him. He's so tenderhearted. He's so
full of mercy and he delights in showing mercy. This is not
God's judgment where he puts his children under twice evil
blackness. This is his mercy when he causes
us to have no place else to go. Lord, where should we go? You
alone have the words of eternal life. We know and are sure that
thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. We've got
no place else to go for this sin problem we have. Exodus chapter two, verse 23
says, the children of Israel cried by reason of their bondage
and God heard their groanings and he remembered his covenant. Oh, here's what the Lord's saying.
Yes, our cries ought not to be feigned. They ought to be from
the heart. And if they're given to us of
God, they will be. But the depth of sorrow and the
sincerity of our cry is not the reason why God answers us. It's
because he remembers the covenant that he made with us. Turn with me to Deuteronomy chapter
26. Deuteronomy 26. Look with me at verse six. And
the Egyptians, evil entreated us and afflicted us and laid
upon us hard bondage. The word, we're in Deuteronomy
chapter 26, verse six. Did I say that right? And Egypt is just like twice
evil blackness, just like the land of the two rivers. The word
Egypt means the land of the crypts. It's the land of tombs. And it's
still those, those big, those big, uh, uh, pyramids stand as
a testimony of Egypt today. Don't they? What were they? They
were the land of these, the tombs for the Kings of Egypt. And that's
what God has delivered us from. brought us out of that land.
But the Egyptians evil and treated us and afflicted us and laid
upon us hard bondage. And when we cried unto the Lord
of our fathers, the Lord heard our voice and looked on our affliction
and our labor and our oppression. And the Lord brought us forth
out of Egypt with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm
and with great terribleness and with signs and with wonders.
And he had brought us into this place and had given us this land,
even the land that is flowing with milk and honey." This is our experience. This
is what God's continuing to do. This is the significance of these
events. The Lord have us see ourselves
in them. He hasn't changed. And the truth
is that we haven't changed. You know, oh, technology has
gotten, you know, more advanced. I was going to say better. I'm
not sure it's all better or not, but it certainly got a lot more
advanced. But we're still the same as the children of Israel
were 3,000 years ago, 3,500 years ago, when Moses brought the children
of Israel out of Egypt. We haven't changed. Luke chapter 18, verse seven
says, shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and
night unto him? I tell you, he will avenge them,
and that speedily. Oh, in the book of Revelation,
the scripture says our prayers of the saints go up to the Lord
like a smoke, and he bottles them up. He hears the cries of
his people. Why are they crying? Why are
they crying? Are they crying out just because
they're in a hard place providentially in their circumstances? We cry
when we get in those hard places, no doubt. But even then, the
real problem is not the place we're in, but the sin that's
in our hearts, it's the unbelief. That's what causes us to be so
miserable in that place. Otherwise we'd be like, we'd
be like Paul and Silas who had just been beaten and chained
to the walls of a Roman dungeon. And what are they doing? Are
they licking their wounds and crying? Oh Lord, look at our
circumstances. They're praising God. You see, it's always our sin,
isn't it? That's our real problem. It's
not our circumstances. And for that reason, we find
ourselves crying day and night. Day and night. Lord, have mercy
upon me. Lord, save me. Lord, deliver
me from my own self. Go back with me to our text.
I want to finish this. And the Spirit of the Lord I'm
sorry. Children of Israel cried, verse
nine, Lord raised up a deliverer, Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's
younger brother, and the spirit of the Lord came upon him. Oh, is this not exactly what
happened when the Lord Jesus Christ came into this world?
And we see it as baptism, the spirit of God coming down as
a dove upon him. And we see when he came back
out of the wilderness and went to his hometown of Nazareth and
opened up the scriptures to Isaiah 61, and he read that passage
of scripture, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has
anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, to give sight to
the blind and deliverance to them that are in bondage. That's
what I've come to do. And they wondered at the gracious
words that proceeded out of his mouth, because they knew that
that passage of scripture was messianic. They knew that that
was a promise of what would come when God sent his Messiah. Could
this, the son of Joseph, be the one? This day, the scripture
has been fulfilled in my sight. And they were happy until they
heard that he was sovereign in salvation, and then they wanted
to kill him. All there in Luke chapter four. Here's our Lord. Here's the Messiah
coming in the full power of the Spirit of God, anointed with
the oil of gladness above his fellows to deliver his people from their
sins. Notice in our text, the Spirit
of the Lord came upon him. Margin of my Bible, this word, This word came says that it was,
that it was given to him and he judged Israel. That's what our Lord Jesus Christ
is. He is the judge and he went out to war. Our Lord pronounces his judgment. He says, sinner, sinner. That's his judgment. But I'm
going to go to war for you. I'm going to go to war against
all the things that sin will result in in your life. Bondage
and twice evil blackness and a free will and death and hell
and Satan and yourself. I'm going to go to war for you.
I'm the man of war. I'm your commander and I'm going
to fight the war for you. And he went all by himself to
the cross of Calvary. And he laid down his life willingly
for his sheep. And he fought sin, he fought
Satan, and he fought death. And he got the victory. He did
prevail. So that we, we don't participate
in this warfare. He fought the battle all by himself,
just like when David went against Goliath. And you remember the
deal was that whoever died, whoever got the victory over the other,
the whole army was subject to that victor. David's a picture
of Christ. He went against Goliath all by
himself. He fought that impossible battle,
a giant that you and I cannot fight, a giant of sin. He went to war for us. And he
got the victory and he gave them peace. Look at our text. And
the spirit of the Lord came upon him and he judged Israel and
went out to war. And the Lord delivered Chushan
Rishatharim, the king of Mesopotamia, two times the evil blackness
in the land of free will into his hand. Into his hand. He got the victory for his people.
I'm going to deliver you with my strong right arm. And that's
exactly what he did. Oh, what hope. We can't deliver. We're just
like these people, aren't we? We're just like them. And his hand prevailed against
two times evil blackness. His hand prevailed against sin.
He got the victory all by himself. And God rewarded him by raising
him from the dead and lifting him up and seated him in his
right hand and saying, sit down here at my right hand until I
make all thine enemies thy footstool. Those who were born into this
world in enmity with God as sinners, they're gonna come and they're
gonna bow at your feet. And the land had rest 40 years. Now I mentioned a moment ago
that the numbers are important in the Bible. What is the number
40 significant of? Testing and trial. How long were the children of
Israel in that wilderness living in tents eating on the manna,
depending upon bread to be given them daily, daily bread, depending
on the rock to give them that water. How long were they there? 40 years. How long was the Lord
Jesus Christ in the wilderness after his baptism and before
he began his public ministry? 40 days. How long did the flood? How long did the deluge last?
How long did the water fall from heaven to destroy this world
and to test Noah and his family in that ark? 40 days. 40 is the
time of a period of trial. How long was Moses up on Mount
Sinai when the children of Israel made a golden calf? 40 days. They thought he wasn't coming
back. What was the Lord doing? Trying them. He kept Moses up
there to see what they would do. He knew what they were going
to do, but to prove them, and they couldn't wait 40 days. And so they began to worship
a golden calf that they had made to remind them of Egypt. Here's
what Othniel gave the children of Israel, 40 years of rest in
the land of trials and troubles. You and I live in this world
for 40 years. I'm talking literally, but just
along with the examples I just gave, this life is a life of
trial. It's a life of trouble. And we'll
be like those unbelieving Israelites who will make for ourselves a
golden calf and worship that. We'll find ourselves crying out
by reason of our sin, and asking God again and again and again,
Lord, send a deliverer. Send Christ, send my Aphneel,
send the Lion of God. Send that one who is strong from
which comes meat. Give me the sweetness of his
word. Oh Lord, I've got to have Christ. Don't leave me to myself. Don't leave me in the land of
two rivers. Don't leave me under twice evil blackness. Lord, save
me. Our heavenly father, bless your
word to the hearts of your people. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Number 11, let's stand together
in the spiral hymnal number 11. With broken heart and contrite
sigh, A trembling sinner, Lord, I cry, Thy heart, ye graces,
rich and free, Oh God.