OK, you've turned your Bibles
to Psalm 73. It's the story of most Christians. I think the longer they go on,
the more Psalms become special to them. And it's a remarkable
thing in the Psalms that we actually have, we have a window into the
thoughts, the innermost thoughts of the people of God, God's chosen
ones and God the Holy Spirit has caused these words to be
written for us, for us right now. The Psalms can say things
that we wouldn't want to have said in public. But God sees
all and knows all. But as I said earlier, one of
the things that's so incredibly important, isn't it, is that
we actually have our understanding and have our thinking about who
we are and about who God is adjusted and continually adjusted by what
God says in his word, rather than allowing our thoughts, even
our good thoughts, even our kind thoughts, even our best thoughts,
to go down paths that human wisdom takes them. So the best that
human wisdom can do is play in the dust or the mud of this earth. That's the best it can ever do. It can just play with trinkets. People of God, we are here to
hear about the God that we must meet. We are here to exalt Him. who is great and good and glorious. And what a remarkable Psalm,
Psalm 73 is. What a shocking Psalm, Psalm
73 is. Shocking in its truthfulness
about the thoughts of this man and his envy and the foolishness
of it. Shocking in the gravity of the
impact of it. Shocking in what it says about
God. about His absolute sovereignty,
about His control over all things, and shocking in the beauty and
the wonder of grace. So often when you see people,
they'll quote little bits out of the psalm, and there are beautiful
bits, and a friend of mine put one of them up on the internet
the other day, and it's beautiful. It's a beautiful psalm. Psalm
73, 25 is beautiful. and 1726, they're beautiful words,
but prior to them come some extraordinary words about God. Let's follow
the psalmist through this journey of his, and no doubt many of
us will be able to say, Amen, that has been my journey. There
are three states that you're in, aren't there? You're either
suffering, you're coming out of suffering, you're in suffering,
or you're about to go into it. Trials and tribulations are part
of life, that doesn't make them light and easy, it makes them
hard. But sometimes the trials that
we have in our inner thoughts are worse than the trials that
we can have physically and externally. And when our Our deceitful heart,
as Jeremiah said, is allowed to have rain. It goes down paths
that are shocking. But God, as I said earlier, God
hedges the way of his people. He hedges them, according to
Hosea, with thorns. So sometimes when we wander,
there is a painful correction. But God is good. This is how he begins. In fact,
Psalm 1 is in a sense a conclusion to the matter, and it's a good
place to begin, isn't it? It's a good place to begin at
the end, because really the end is what matters, isn't it? The
viewpoint that we have from the end will determine how we really
do see all of what has passed beforehand. For those people
who are gods and they're taken to glory, they will see their
life laid out before them and they will see the loving, omnipotent,
omniscient hand of God every tiny millisecond. God is good,
in verse 23 he says, is continually with him. So that means that
he was with him in the midst of these trials. When you go
through the waters, I will be with you. When trouble comes,
he says, I will be with you. And he holds him. That's why
he says that he is good. God is good. It's a really good thing to lay
down and lay foundations down clearly. When we are struggling
with issues in scripture or issues in life, it's really good to
lay the foundations down again and again. And then we have a
framework. We have a framework then into
which all the troubles must fit. And the framework, of course,
for God's people is who God is in His character. God is good,
but His goodness is a purposeful goodness. He's good to Israel. And then He describes Israel,
even such as are of a clean heart. What a great description of God's
people. How do they have clean hearts?
This man's heart is exposed before us, a corrupted heart, but a clean
heart. God's children are made clean
by a sovereign act of God, by an act of God in eternity and
by an act of God in time. He says in Ezekiel 36, I will
take you out from among the heathen. I will gather you out of all
countries and will bring you into your own land. Then, this
is his sermon in a sense that the Lord Jesus summarised to
Nicodemus. Then I will sprinkle clean water
on you and you shall be clean. And from all your filthiness
and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart also
will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I
will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give
you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you, and
cause you to walk in my statutes, and you shall keep my judgments
and do them." of stone is taken away and a
heart of flesh is given." I love the way the Church dealt with
the first attack, the first organised attack, in a sense, from the
worst possible place. Traitors within. And the Church
has that great council in Jerusalem. And of course the issue is Surely
we must add something of our activities to the work of the
Lord Jesus. He's done a great job, and it's
great that you Galatians are zealous for Him, but here is
a way of perfecting holiness, you Gentiles. You can do what
we Jews have been doing. And we Jews are still trying
to do, even to this day. You can add some of your activities,
and by adding your activities, you'll polish, or you'll put
some jewels on the crown of Christ's righteousness. And then everyone
will see. Everyone will see. God knows
the hearts, says Peter. And he says to them, why do you
people test God? Why are you putting Him to the
test? The test that they're putting
Him to is a test to actually show His wrath and His judgment
upon them, a test that people have been putting Him to for
a long time. He wins. He wins. Why do you put God to the test?
And these Gentiles heard the word of the gospel, and God,
which knows the hearts, bears them witness, giving them the
Holy Spirit, even as He did unto us. And He put no difference
between us and them. How did He purify their hearts? Purifying their hearts by faith. Purify your heart by having your
heart fixed on the purifier of your heart. You cannot clean this body of
flesh by, as my friend Clay says, taking the dirty mop of human
activity and wiping it over the floor. It just remains filthy. We purify our hearts by faith. We are not to put a yoke on the
neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor they
were able to bear. To have a pure heart is an essential
thing, isn't it? You cannot get into heaven without
a pure heart. You can read about it in Psalm
15 and Psalm 24. But you cannot. Who can walk
on God's holy hill? How do you get into the presence
of God? Who shall abide in thy tabernacle?
Who shall dwell on thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly and
worketh righteousness and speaketh the truth in his heart. doesn't speak ill with his tongue,
do evil to his neighbour, nor take up a reproach against his
neighbour. In his eyes a vile person is
treated with contempt, but he honours them that fear the Lord,
and he swears to his own heart, he makes promises to his own
hurt, and changes not. He doesn't put his money out
to usury. He that does these things will
never be moved. Psalm 24 says very, very similar
things. A clean heart is a gift of God's
sovereign grace. To those who have a clean heart,
remarkably when Paul writes to Titus he says, to those who have
a clean heart, to the pure All things are pure to the pure. All things are pure. And then
he describes defilement in verse 15 of chapter 1 of Titus. See,
to be defiled is to be unbelieving. Purify your hearts by faith. Defilement is unbelieving. Unto
the pure all things are pure, but unto them that are defiled
and unbelieving is nothing pure, but even their mind and their
conscience is defiled." And he's talking about professing Christians. They profess that they know God,
that in works they deny Him, being abominable and disobedient
unto every good work with propate." God is good. He's good to His
people. He cleanses their heart. But
then the psalmist looks to himself, as for me, my feet were almost
gone. My steps had well nigh slipped. Here he is in a treacherous place,
in a slippery place, because, verse 3, I was envious at the
foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. Titus has described the wicked.
Let's go down before we go too far and have a look at what really
it is in the scriptures to be wicked. In Psalm 73 there are
descriptions of two people. There are some that are far from
Him and they perish. They are far from Him. And then He says, Thou hast destroyed
all them that go a-whoring from Thee. You see, there are two
groups of the wicked in the psalm. Those who will have never heard
the Gospel and God allows for them to live their lives in this
world and they go on in this world without a knowledge of
the Gospel. They're not innocent. They're
not innocent. We'll see how the wicked behave
earlier on. But they are not innocent. They
have the light of the knowledge of God's character in creation
and His call upon them in their consciences. But they are far
from Him. But see, in the Scriptures, the
second group, thou hast destroyed all them that go a-whoring from
you. Every time we read of whoring
in the Scriptures, we are reading about religious people who would
claim to be married to God, who would claim that the Lord Jesus
is their Lord. And yet, they had gone off a
whoring. Of course, in Revelation 21,
I mean, 18, 17, 18, we have a great description of that harlot, haven't
we? The great whore. Upon her forehead
was the name written, Mystery Babylon the Great. the mother
of harlot and abomination of the earth. This woman was arrayed
in purple and scarlet colour and decked with gold and precious
stones and pearls, having a golden cup full of her abominations
and filthiness of her fornication. And this woman was drunk with
the blood of the martyrs, the blood of God's people. Proverbs
talks about the allurements of a loose woman, a whore. In Proverbs, turn with me and we can read
some of it together. In chapter 7 he says, My son,
keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee. Keep
my commandments and live in my law as the apple of thine eye. Bind them upon my fingers, write
them upon the table of thine heart, and say to wisdom, Thou
art my sister, and call understanding thy kinsmen. Kinswoman, that
they may keep you from a strange woman, from a stranger which
flatters with her words. For at the window of my house
I looked through my casement and beheld among the simple ones
I discerned among the years a young man void of understanding passing
through the street near her corner. He went the way to her house. In twilight in the evening in
the black and dark night and behold there met him a woman
with the attire of a harlot and subtle of heart. She is loud
and stubborn, her feet abide not in her house. Now she is
without, now in the streets and lieth in wait at every corner. So she caught him and kissed
him and with an impudent face said unto him, I have peace offerings
with me this day, I have paid my vows. Therefore came I forth
to meet Thee, diligently to seek Thy face, and I found Thee. I
have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with card works
and the fine linen of Egypt. I have perfumed my bed with myrrh
and aloes and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of
love until the morning. Let us solace ourselves with
love. for the good man. He's not home, he's gone on a
long journey, he's taken a bag of money with him and will come
home at the day appointed. With her much fair speech she
caused him to yield and with flattery of her lips she forced
him. He goes after her straightway
as an ox goes to the slaughter or as a fool to the correction
of the stocks. till a dart strikes through his
liver as a bird hastens to the snare and knows not that it is
for his life. Harken unto me now therefore,
O ye children. Attend to the words of my mouth.
Let not thine heart decline her ways, nor go astray in her paths. For she has cast out many wounded,
yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the
way to hell, going down to the chambers of death." Some people are far from God.
Some of the wicked go a-whoring from God. They claim to know
Him. You can read about it in 1 Timothy
3-4. They claim to know God. They claim to be His servants. They claim to be the ones who
teach and lead His people. And yet they deny the very character
of God. They don't say God is good to
Israel. They say God is good to everyone. They don't say that
God purifies the hearts of his people by faith. They say that
you can work to purify your own hearts by your own activities. The most wicked in all of this
world are the enticing whores. They are attractive to our flesh. They promise us gratification. There is a large community of
them. As Revelation says, the world
goes after them. It's the religion of Babylon
the harlot. Free will works religion. And he was envious for a while,
wasn't he? For I was, verse 3, for I was
envious of the foolish and I saw the prosperity. There is great
prosperity. We read about her prosperity
in Revelation. Then it says that their prosperity
is such that they go to death. There are no pains in their death.
They go all the way to death without there being any pain,
any emotional pain, sometimes almost no physical pain. And
their strength remains firm. And they are not in trouble as
other men, neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore, because
they are free of these troubles and they are free of these plagues,
and because they are strong, and because, as Isaiah says,
they have made a covenant with death, death's not going to touch
me. I am right. Over and over again,
every time you hear anything on television about someone died,
there was a jockey that died in Singapore the other day, and
they had a ceremony at the race course yesterday in Sydney, and
of course, what do they say? You hear it at almost every funeral
these days, what's he doing now, this young man who tragically
died of a problem with his brain? What's he doing while all they
are gathered there at the race course with their horses and
all their fine. What's he doing? He's looking
down. He's looking down and he's smiling
at them. Isn't that sweet? Isn't that
sweet? Where did those lies come from,
brothers and sisters? Those lies that the pagans in
our world are pronouncing to each other at every jolly funeral
in the land are lies they got from people standing behind pulpits
here saying, God loves everyone, He's got a wonderful plan for
your life, and Jesus died for everyone, and grace is common, and His love is a love that's
going to rescue everyone. Let's read on. We'll find that
the God of this Bible is not a God. Despite the fact that
His people might stumble and fall and be envious, the God
of the Scriptures is a very, very different God. Their pride
encompasses about them as a chain. They wear it like a merrile chain,
don't they, with a great It's a great show for people
to see them and for others to applaud them in how wonderful
they are. But violence covers them as a
garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness. They're so fat and so full that
their eyes stand out. They have more than heart could
wish. They are corrupt. They speak,
they threaten oppression and they speak loftily. They speak with great pride. Nothing has restrained their
pride, nothing they've seen in themselves. They speak great
swelling words of vanity, says Peter. They allure through the
lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness. They set their mouths against
the heavens, they speak against God, and their tongue walketh
through the earth, and they gather multitudes to them. Everyone
joins in. All of them join in together.
Therefore his people run hither and the waters of a full cup
are run out to them. They have a full cup and they
can drink it to the end. They drink the pleasures. They drink the pleasures of the
great heart. They drink the pleasures of this
world and they drink them to the full. And each generation
has its own bunch of pleasures that it seeks after. If you get
to a group of people of my age now, the one thing they want
to talk about incessantly almost is their trips. where they have
been, what they did, and then always, always, in the conversations
I've listened to, there's always the next one just around the
corner. It's not good enough to brag about all those, but
I've now got another one that I've just planned. It's just
extraordinary, isn't it? How much do they need to see?
They run hither. They wring out the cup to the
full. Fine wine, fine food, fine pleasures. And then they say, they're religious
of course, how does God know? How does God know? Can God know? As the people in the days of
Jeremiah and Ezekiel says, does God really see? Does God really
see? Here we are and this wickedness
has brought us prosperity. This wickedness and this, what
a successful world, what a successful civilization we have. What a remarkable thing we have,
this thing called Western Civilization. And guess what? We've actually
done it. We've done it without God. We've
done it without Him. We didn't need Him. We've done
it by ourselves. Does God know? Is there knowledge? Does he see these things? Does he know everything? Where
is God in all of this? In their hearts, He's so far
removed that they can live their lives in peace. Having put Him aside, He doesn't
know, He doesn't understand, He doesn't see, and we We are
free, aren't we? Now we can exercise our freedom. One of the great movements of
our land, aren't they? There are great movements to
exercise the freedom of man, unconstrained by God, unconstrained
by His Word, unconstrained by His knowledge of what is going
on, unconstrained by His judgments. Behold, he says in verse 12,
he summarises, these are the ungodly who prosper in the world
and they increase in riches. They prosper and they increase. And in verse 13 he says, Verily,
truly, I have cleansed my heart in vain and washed my hands in
innocency. Here he is for this short time,
he sees wickedness being successful, so successful, and he sees in
righteousness just suffering. the more the Gospel impacts people
and the more clearly we see things of this world through the eyes
of our Lord. In a sense our suffering increases
as we see their joy. I sit at this desk on Thursday
afternoons for an hour or so, and it's just at the hour when
everyone's going home from work. And it's just remarkable. I know
them now. Not that I don't know them personally, but I know the
ones and I know their cars, because they're parked in the same places.
And the ones walk by here, and they walk by both sides. And
the thing that's remarkable is that they're just great. They're
just jovial. End of a day's work, only one
more day, and the weekend's here. And they're just so happy. Generally
they are really, really happy. They are chatting amiably and
drinking their coffee and organizing what they are doing and talking
on their phones. And God's people, God's people
are caused to see this world through the eyes of the Lord,
aren't they? And we see their success but
also we are caused to be troubled, aren't we? We cannot look at
the people of this world, we cannot look at them without,
in a sense, as the Lord Jesus did when he looked out on Jerusalem
and he beheld that city, and there's a real sense that we
are living in days where he is drawing closer. And what, what
will it be like in the swelling of the Jordan for the multitudes
around us. Their peace and their happiness
is a very, very short thing." Now, God's people have been troubled,
haven't they? He's cleansed his heart in vain,
he says. In a sense, he's almost brought
to the... And he's saying this to himself.
He's not saying this publicly. He's saying, in a sense, what
good is it to serve God? What good is it? How much pain
do we suffer? How many relationships have become
difficult because of the Gospel? How much do we long for people
that we love and care for to be saved? How much do we long
for them? How much do we grieve in ways
that the rest of the world knows nothing of? The rest of the world
goes on in its religion and it's big and it's powerful and it's
successful. And to the very extent that they
are successful and bold and popular, God's people are grieved. Grieved because the Lord's name
is blasphemed in this land. He says, for all day long I have
been plagued. The promise of God is that his
people will be persecuted. All that want to live a godly
life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. And it begins in
the morning, doesn't it? Chastened every morning. And
then he finishes looking at them, and then he looks again at himself,
and it's remarkable, isn't it? He says, I've thought these things. to a place where he has to stop
and think, what if I say these things? If I speak this way,
if I speak as I have described the wicked, if I speak as I have
described my own sense of trouble in light of all this,
behold, I should offend against the generation of your children. He thinks these things and he
stops short of saying them. What a great lesson that is for
us. What a great, great lesson it is for us to stop and give
second thoughts. Often second thoughts are much,
much wiser thoughts. And very, very often the wisest
thing to say is absolutely nothing. And you see, the thing that motivates
him is his offense. He doesn't want to bring offense
to the children of God. He doesn't want to offend God's
children. And when he thought, verse 16,
when he thought to know this, when he thought that he might
have said that serving God is vanity, and look how well the
wicked are doing, when I thought this, It was too painful for
me. Now he's in real pain. He's in
real pain. And then we have this wonderful
solution to his problem. Until I went into the sanctuary
of God, until he goes into the holy place
with God, until he comes to a place where he is before the Word of
God, before the temple of God, maybe in heaven itself, the sanctuary
of God. He says, now I understand, then
I understood, See, before then he had no understanding. He was
seeing through the eyes of flesh. Our eyes deceive us, brothers
and sisters. Our eyes deceive us. The eyes
of faith show us light. In His light we see light. In
our own wisdom we do not have understanding. And then he describes
God in ways which are shocking. Shocking to modern religion.
Shocking to modern religion that says that God loves everyone,
that says that grace is common, that says that God has provided
a way of salvation for everyone. It's an offer, and if you will
accept it, he's done all he can do. God is trying to save everyone. Listen to the description the
Holy Spirit gives of God through the lips and the words of this
man. Surely thou didst set them in
slippery places. In fact that word slippery means
slick and smooth. It's like being on a slope, an
icy slope. Smooth. The other word that it
can be used to describe is splattery. You've set them in a place where
they are flattered, where they are told how good and how wonderful
they are. Someone speaking peace to them.
But see what God has done. He did the setting. He said He
set them in slippery places. He casts them down into destruction. They are set in a place where
they can fall just by their own weight. In a slippery place,
you need very, very little. If you've walked on slippery
rocks, you know how dangerous it is. Those moss-covered slippery
rocks, they're just like glass, aren't they? You just fall under
your own weight, and you fall in an uncontrollable sort of
way. God set them in those places
and he casts them down to destruction. He casts them down to destruction. This is what he sees from the
sanctuary of God about the wicked, how they are brought into destruction. Brought into destruction as in
a moment They are utterly consumed with terror. This is God's doing, isn't it?
This is God's activity in judgment of these people who flatter themselves
and they have been proud. Proud in their activities, proud
in their wickedness, proud in their achievements. And then in verse 20, he says,
As a dream when one wakes, so, O Lord, when you wake, thou shalt
despise their image. See, it seems to the world, doesn't
it, that God is asleep. We have been so successful, we
have achieved so much without Him. In fact, we've managed to
trample His name down in the streets of our cities in this
world. And it seems as if he's powerless
to stop us. We've got our place on the throne,
and he has been dethroned completely. And it seems as if he's just
not there or asleep. He isn't asleep. When thou awakest,
thou shalt despise their image. What a shocking thing. He shall
despise their image. So much for the God who loves
absolutely everyone. he shall despise their image."
They've got to change the character of God and say that at some stage
He loved them and then He turned and hated them, which is what
Tozer and these guys said, that God loves everyone up until the
gates of hell and then automatically for some God changes and then
His love turns into hatred. We read that in the Malachi the
other night, didn't we? The Lord God changes not. Therefore
you sons of Jacob are not consumed. He despises their image. What
a difference it is for God's people. As David said in Psalm
17 verse 15, As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied when I awake
in thy likeness. Here we have the repentance of
our psalmist. He's been to the sanctuary of
God, he's looked at things from heaven's perspective, he's opened
his Bible and he's seen what his Bible says, what God's Word
says about things, rather than his own mind. Thus my heart was
grieved and I was pricked deep within, it means, in my kidneys,
it means I was just to the inner core of my being, I was grieved. Then he calls himself, he says,
I was foolish and ignorant and I was as a beast before you. He thought as a foolish man. He thought as an ignorant man
and very nearly said it. And he says the best of his thoughts,
those foolish thoughts and those ignorant thoughts, were no different
to the thoughts of an animal. Oh dear brothers and sisters,
how we need the mind of God. Then he says this remarkable
thing, doesn't he? That is repentance, isn't it?
My heart was grieved, I was pricked in my reins, and then faith. Nevertheless, he looks to God,
he says, nevertheless I am continually with Thee. Thou hast holden me
by my right hand." Do you see, he'd nearly slipped in verse
2. His feet were almost gone. His
steps had nearly slipped on this slippery place. And he says, you were with me. You were with me. You were with
me when I had those thoughts which were so dishonouring to
you and potentially dishonouring to others and I nearly slipped,
I nearly joined them. in their slippery places, but
you held me by my right hand." He takes hold of his people and
he holds them. Repentance and faith says, you
shall guide me. What a great word. What a great
word of faith. You shall guide me how? You shall
guide me with thy counsel. You'll guide me with your words.
and afterwards receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but Thee? There is none on earth that I
desire beside Thee. My flesh and my heart fail."
What a shocking thing it is for our flesh to be failing us all
the time. His heart fails, but God is the
strength. God is the rock of my heart,
it means. He's the rock of my heart and
He is my portion forever. He has kept Him. Even in the
midst of all of this, He has kept Him. even when he has to
acknowledge that God in His absolute sovereignty sets them in slippery
places and casts them down and brings them to destruction and
utterly consumes them and despises them. He says, God is the strength
of my heart and my portion forever. It's so difficult, isn't it,
so often when we come across passages like this in Romans
9 and Proverbs 16 and many, many passages throughout the scriptures
where we find that God in judgment is far more terrifying than we
would allow for. The psalmist has seen the corruption
of his own heart, the silliness of his own thoughts, And yet he says to that God who
is absolutely sovereign, sovereign over the destruction of these
people and sovereign over the preservation of his own, he says,
God is the strength and is my portion forever. In verse 27 we looked at before,
he says that they that are far off from thee shall perish. What
a strong, strong word it is for those to perish. That Malaysian
airliner had those souls on board, didn't it? They have perished.
Perished. Thou hast destroyed all them
that go whoring from thee. But it is good for me to draw
near to God. I have put my trust in the Lord,
that I may declare all thy works." So he's been brought to a place
where his works are nothing. He's seen himself for what he
is, foolish and ignorant as a beast. but he puts his trust in God
and he declares God's work. So he puts his trust in a God
whose character is revealed here as good to Israel. How do we draw near to God? Let's
finish. It's good for us to draw near
to God. How do we draw near to him? In Hebrews 7.19 there's a beautiful
description of drawing near to God. It says, for the law made
nothing perfect, but bringing in of a better hope
did, by which we draw nigh unto God. We draw near unto God because
of this better hope. We don't draw near according
to the rest of that chapter. We do not draw near to God by
going back to the law, because the law made nothing perfect
and it was weak and it was unprofitable because of the weakness of the
flesh of man which you have seen before us. So we draw near unto
God because of the better hope. He has made the surety of a better
testament. Therefore He is able to save
them to the uttermost that come to God by Him, seeing He ever
lives to make intercession for them. For such a high priest
became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners,
and made higher than the heavens. who needeth not daily as those
high priests to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins and then
for the sins of the people. For this he did once. Can you
trust his once activity when he offered up himself? For the law makes men high priests
which have infirmity, but the word of oath which for since
the law makes the same, who is consecrated for evermore." We
have such a high priest who is set on the right hand of the
throne. We've been reading about God's
throne, of the majesty in heaven. A minister of the sanctuary,
we need to go to a sanctuary of the true tabernacle. which
God pitched and not man." What a great high priest we have. He says, I will be merciful to
their unrighteousness and their sins and iniquities will I remember
no more. What a great high priest. What
a great high priest to draw near to. What a great high priest
who ministers in that sanctuary for us at this very moment. What a great high priest who
gives us this word and makes it spirit and life to us. Let's
pray.