Let's turn in our Bibles to Exodus
chapter 2. Exodus chapter 2. You know, the children of Israel
were used by God as a type, a picture of His true elect Israel. And
we very much see and learn a lot about God's dealings with His
true spiritual people by how He dealt children of Israel. Now at the time that we pick
up here at Exodus 2, the children of Israel were in bondage in
Egypt. They were in bondage. There was
an evil Pharaoh that had arisen that did not know Joseph and
he had taken them into bondage. They had taken them for slaves.
They were treated very cruelly. That's a picture of us by nature. We were in bondage to sin and
in bondage to the devil and in bondage in religion and just
to our nature. We were children of wrath even
as others. But it says in verse 23, and
it came to pass in process of time that the king of Egypt died. Well, things are going to be
good now. That will change things for the children of Israel, won't
it? A new Pharaoh takes over. Somebody new comes into office,
and the children of Israel side by reason of the bondage. This is a good lesson right here
for us, especially after a political election. You know, whenever
political rulers die or get out of office and another takes over,
that doesn't change things for God's people. God's people aren't
benefited by the world. God may use the world to benefit
us, but it's God who benefits His people. The seed of the serpent
will always hate the seed of woman in every age for all time. You can just bank on that. This
world is not the friend of God's people. And this world's political
changes do not alter the hearts of men. So it does not affect
the state of God's saints from wicked men. But here's how God's
people are cared for. Look now at the next part of
verse 23. And they cried. And their cry
came up unto God by reason of the bondage. It won't do any
good to make your cries to wicked men of this world. It will do
us no good. Not spiritually. Not eternally. Our good will come from God in
glory. That's to whom we cry. Now, I
want to show you here four things God does for His people. Four
things God does for His people. He only does this for His people. You're going to see here a picture
of it. He does this for Israel, but He doesn't do it for the
Egyptians. He doesn't do it for any other nation. He did this
for the children of Israel. And that shows us God only does
this for His people. Now, first of all, here are the
four things that will make up our divisions. First of all,
verse 24 says, and God heard their groanings. God heard. God hears His people. Number
two, verse 24 says, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with
Isaac, and with Jacob. God remembers His covenant. He remembers His covenant for
the sake of Christ. And then I'm going to put three
and four together. Thirdly, verse 25 says, And God
looked upon the children of Israel. God looks upon His people. And
then the next thing, we'll take in this same point, And God had
respect unto them. God has respect unto His people. Now let's take these one at a
time. First of all, God heard. It says here in verse 23, their
cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage, and God heard
their groaning by reason of the bondage. Now, understand what
this word means when it says by reason of the bondage. It's
telling us that the children of Israel were not crying to
God. They weren't praying to God.
They weren't crying unto God. They were groaning and crying
simply because of the bondage. They just didn't like the bondage.
They were crying because of the bondage. And even worse than
that, Scripture tells us that the children of Israel, you got
to realize they were in bondage a long time. And one generation
after another grows up and you got generations that didn't even
know Joseph personally. And they've seen the Egyptians
and how they worship and what they worship and they worshipped
everything. They worshipped everything in nature. They worshipped about
like our world does now. They worshipped trees and frogs
and dogs and lions and creeping things and the sky, the moon,
the stars, everything but God. Well, the children of Israel
had started worshipping their idols too. We know that. Joshua 24, verse 14, the Lord
is speaking after He's, years later, He's delivered them over
into Canaan. And He's speaking to the children
of Israel. And He says, Fear the Lord, and serve Him in sincerity
and in truth. And put away the gods which your
father served on the other side of the flood, on the other side
of Jordan, and in Egypt. Put away the gods your father
served in Egypt. Way back there in Egypt. and
serve ye the Lord. Listen to this. I'll read you
another passage over in Ezekiel. In Ezekiel, in chapter 20, the
Lord said to them, Cast ye away every man the abomination of
his eyes. He said, let me back up. He said,
In the day that I lifted up my hand to them to bring them forth
of the land of Egypt into a land that I aspired for them, flowing
with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands, Then
said I unto them, Cast ye away every man the abominations of
his eyes, and defile not yourselves with the idols of Egypt. I am
the Lord your God. And God said, But they would
not forsake the idols of Egypt." They wouldn't forsake. So they
weren't crying to God. They were worshiping false gods.
If they were crying to a god, they were crying to a frog or
a serpent or a cat or something like that. They weren't crying
to God. But God still heard them. God heard them. Their cry came
up to God and God heard them. You reckon there was anybody
else in Egypt, any Egyptians in Egypt who were crying because
they didn't like their station in life? Probably a lot of them. But who did He hear? He heard
the children of Israel. This ought to be great comfort
to us, brethren, now that we do know the Lord. to know that
even when we were in our rebellion, even when we did not know God,
even when we were crying out to a God who could not save the
God of our imagination, God still heard His people. How so? How could that possibly be? It's
because God chose His people in Christ by His grace. That means free, unmerited favor
by His grace, not based on anything in you and I, but all the condition. We talk about unconditional election,
and yes, it is unconditional as far as there was no condition
God looked for in us. But election did have a condition
to it. It was all in what Christ would accomplish for His people.
That was the condition. And God put that work in Christ's
hand. And God looked to Christ. And
so by grace, when He looked upon you and me in our rebellion,
He didn't look upon us in our rebellion. He looked upon us
in Christ. And His grace never changed.
When we fell in at Him, His grace did not change. When we were
conceived in sin in our mother's womb, His grace did not change.
When we came forth speaking lies and lived all our lives hating
God and hating one another and calling it holiness, In vain
religion, His grace didn't change. God heard us and He always hears
His people. Now knowing that brethren, knowing
that even when we were dead in sin, even when we were rebels
against God, our cry came up to God and He heard our groanings.
That ought to make every sinner here realize the importance of
calling on God. Everyone here, even you that
don't know him, you should call on God because God's going to
hear his people. If you're his, God's going to
hear you. I'd call on him. I'd take that. I'd take that
venture. If you sit where you are, you're
going to perish. Call on him. It just might be that he hears
you and he answers you. But for you that do believe,
knowing that God heard us when we were in our rebellion, nothing
ought to stop us from ever calling on God. The psalmist said, In
the day when I cried, thou answeredest me, and strengthest me with a
strength in my soul. God hears His people. That's
the first thing God does for His people. He hears us, even
when we were in our rebellion. Alright, secondly, God remembered. God remembered. verse 24, and
God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with
Jacob. We live in a day when very few
people even know what a covenant is, because very few people are
not true to their word. To be in a covenant means you're
going to be true to your word. You're going to do what you say
you'll do. And I'm going to tell you something, you get one chance
to do what you say you'll do. Once you've stopped doing what
you said you'll do, you don't get to go back then and be a
man of your word after that. Whoever you broke your word with
from then on, they're going to know he might do it, he might
not. He's proven to me he's not a
man of his word. You've got one chance with somebody
to do what you say you'll do. After you've broken that, you
can't do that anymore. So always be true to your word.
It's important. But God, He's a covenant God. And He saves His people with
an everlasting covenant. And that covenant that God speaks
of here with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, now that is a picture. Now He did make the everlasting
covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob because they were His
true people. And a lot of what He says in regards to the covenant
that he made with political Israel has a picture of spiritual things
in it. But the whole covenant of works was a picture of the
everlasting covenant of grace. It was a covenant of grace. What
is the covenant of grace, the covenant of redemption, the covenant
of everlasting salvation? In eternity, God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit all entered into covenant
agreement to fulfill some aspect of the salvation of His people.
That means God didn't leave a thing in the hands of His people for
us to do. God entered covenant to do it all. God the Father
promised to glorify His Son. God the Holy Spirit promised
to give His people life when He had redeemed them. And Christ
promised to do everything, to purge our sins, to satisfy the
law for us, to make us righteous, to bring us to God, to preserve
His people, to present us all before God, holy and without
blame. So nothing was left in our hands. Everything was put
into the hands of Christ. by God the Father and God the
Spirit. It was a covenant between the
triune God and not left in our hands. Now God, when He came
forth, He did make a covenant with the children of Israel.
And it was called a covenant of works. God said, if you do
this, I'll do this. And so they had to do so many
works and do this or that, they had to keep the law perfectly
and God would fulfill everything He promised to them. And the
fact is, God fulfilled everything He promised to them. Everything
He promised was earthly promises. It involved earthly deliverance.
It involved earthly blessings and an earthly Canaan. But it
pictured a spiritual covenant with spiritual blessings and
spiritual promises and a spiritual deliverance and a spiritual heavenly
Canaan. That's what it typified. I'll
give you an example. In Genesis 15, 13, God promised
Abraham. He said, Know of a surety that
thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs,
and shall serve them, and they shall afflict them four hundred
years. And also that nation whom they
shall serve will I judge, and afterwards shall they come out
with great substance. Now God made that covenant with
Abraham way, way, way back there, before Isaac was born, before
Jacob was born, before Joseph was born, long before the children
of Israel ever went into bondage. And that shows you and me, God
knew the end from the beginning. Before He made this earth, God
knew what was going to become of His people. And the Son knew
what was going to become of His people, and the Spirit knew what
was going to become of His people. He knew we would fall in at Him,
and we would come into bondage, and we would be strangers in
a strange land that is not ours, and we would be afflicted in
that land by the serpent of the devil, by the seed of the devil,
by wicked men. But, just like He told Abraham
it would be for 400 years, God set the time in eternity. when Christ would come forth,
and Christ agreed, covenant, word, agreed, He would come forth
when the time was come, and He would be made of a woman, made
under the law, and redeem His people from the bondage and curse
of the law. He would come and deliver us
out, just like God promised He'd come and deliver Israel out of
bondage. The next thing we're going to deal with in this third
chapter is Christ's coming. Christ's coming. in the burning
bush, picture of the cross, and then Him sending forth Moses
to call out His people out of Egypt, a picture of the gospel
going forth. You see, God promised that. He promised, He set the
time, He set the boundary, and He set the boundary when He's
going to send the gospel to each elect child and quicken us in
the heart and deliver us from the bondage of our sin nature.
He's going to come forth and say to the prisoners, come forth,
show yourself. And when you do that, that's
when you'll step out into the light. and confess all this work
was done by Christ. It wasn't done by me. And all
I ever did was filthy and evil. And then in the last day, when
it's time, He's going to judge. He's going to call all His people
out of the bondage of this world, redeem us out of this body, and
this death, and this world. And He's going to judge that
nation that had us in bondage. He's going to judge Satan. He's
going to judge wicked men that treated us evil. And it harmed
us and it kept us in bondage here. He's especially going to
judge false preachers that told people lies. Told them they could
be saved by the work of their hand. That weighs on me. I don't want to be found a false
preacher. I don't want to be found somebody telling people
lies. I want to be found somebody who's preaching the truth. We've
preached the gospel to you. That's what I want to be found
to say. And when He's done that, we're
going to be delivered. And His people will be put down. Or those
people that afflicted us will be put down. And that's what
God promised. We see it in that picture there.
And God remembers the covenant. That covenant He made, He remembers.
You want me to tell you why He remembers His covenant? Because
the essence of that covenant is not a doctrine. Men want to
fight and wrangle and argue over a doctrine. The essence of that
covenant is Christ Himself. It's God's Son. He's the covenant.
Look over at Isaiah 49. I'll show you that. Isaiah 49 verse 8. He's speaking
to Christ right here. He calls Him Israel because we're
given His name. And as a prince, He's prevailed
with God. That's what Israel means. And
here's what he says to Christ. You read on in this and see that
he's obviously talking about Christ. He can't be talking about
anybody else but His Son. Isaiah 49.8, he says, Thus saith
the Lord, in an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day
of salvation have I helped thee, and I will preserve thee. This
is what Paul quoted over there in 2 Corinthians 5. This is what
he was quoting from. And he says here, I'll preserve thee and I'll give
thee for a covenant of the people to establish the earth to cause
to inherit the desolate heritage. Christ is the covenant. Christ
came forth and he shed his blood. Fulfilling that work God gave
Him to do. And when Christ hands you and
me that cup of wine, when we celebrate His broken body and
His shed blood, when He hands us that cup of wine, what does
He say? This is the New Testament. This is the New Covenant in my
blood. Christ is the Covenant. Christ
is the Covenant. When will you have the Covenant?
When will you have the Law of God written on your heart? when
Christ is the essence of your new heart, when Christ is formed
in you. He is the law written on the heart. He is the covenant.
He is the righteousness and holiness of the law which the new man
is. Let me go over to Jeremiah 31. Christ fulfilled that law. And
He is going to create His people anew with a new nature. And in
that new nature, you are righteous and holy. What is the law of
God? It's righteous and holy. Well, He tells us He's going
to write His law on our hearts. And you know what He's saying?
He's going to make us have a new heart, a new man, a new spirit
that is righteous and holy, just like the law of God is. The law
has nothing to say to it because it is what the law requires.
It's righteous and holy by Christ being formed in you. Watch this.
Jeremiah 31, 31. Behold, the days come, saith
the Lord, that I make a new covenant with the house of Israel and
with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that
I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the
hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which my covenant
they break, although I was a husband unto them, saith the Lord. You
see, God fulfilled everything He said He would. The children
of Israel didn't fulfill their end. That's what He just said.
My covenant they break, although I was a husband to them, saith
the Lord. But this shall be the covenant that I will make with
the house of Israel. After those days, saith the Lord,
that is in this gospel age when Christ is come, I'll put my law
in their inward parts and I'll write it in their hearts. That's
Christ being formed in you. That's a new man being created
in righteousness and true holiness. That's why the law's got nothing
to say to that new man in which we worship God, because he's
created and he is what the law requires. He's made in righteousness
and holiness by Christ our righteousness and Christ our holiness. And
he says, And I'll be their God, and they'll be my people. And
they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man
his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know
me from the least of them to the greatest of them, saith the
Lord. For I'll forgive their iniquity, and I'll remember their
sin no more. Now that's God's covenant promise.
God remembers His covenant. He always does. He remembers
Christ who is the covenant. Everything that He does here,
He heard them, you know why? For the sake of Christ. He remembered
His covenant because Christ is His covenant. He's going to look
upon them because He's looking upon Christ. He's going to have
respect unto them because He has respect unto Christ. Everything
here has to do with Christ and what we are in Christ. So He
remembers Christ, His covenant. He remembers all that Christ
fulfilled in that covenant. He remembers Christ's faithfulness
and all the promises that He made to us for the sake of Christ. And He tells you and me, all
the promises of God, every covenant word spoken to us by God in Christ
is yes and in Him, amen, unto the glory of God. To the glory
of God. He remembers His covenant. Isn't
it good? When we dwell in the world, you
know, in this day and time, the only way people will honor a
covenant is if it's signed, legally binding, and they're fearful
they're going to get sued in a court of law. That's how sinful
and corrupt we are. We've got to be held by a legal
document and threat of legal action to make us fulfill our
covenant. Not God. God willingly came forth
and fulfilled every stipulation in His covenant, made it ordered
in everything and sure, and He makes it all the salvation of
His people. And we trust God will never forget
His covenant. He'll never forget it. Now, here's
the last thing. I want to take these last two
points together. God looks upon His people and
He has respect unto His people. Verse 25 says, And God looked
upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them. In most places that word respect
is translated God knew them. And both words are correct. Here it has meaning of respect. He had respect unto them and
He knew them. God looked upon them and God
had respect unto them. He looked upon them, and when
He looked upon them, He saw their bondage and their affliction.
You remember what Christ said? When He cried out, My God, My
God, why hast thou forsaken Me? And He said, You're holy, and
I'm a worm and no man. That's why you've forsaken Me,
Lord, on the cross. But when He got finished with
that, Psalm, He said, He has not abhorred the affliction of
the afflicted. He looked upon Me. Christ said,
He looked upon Me. And he remembered his covenant.
Christ finished the work and he remembered his covenant. And
he had respect to Christ. He raised him from the grave
to sit down at his own right hand. And for Christ's sake,
God looks on the affliction of His people. And when He looks
on our affliction, He remembers Christ's affliction. What Christ
endured for His people. You say, how could He do that
way back then before Christ suffered? God's eternal. The works were
finished from the foundation of the world. He knew the end
from the beginning. He looked on His Son as the Lamb
slain from the foundation of the world. He looked on the affliction
of His Son. That's what He looked upon. And
doing so, He looks upon our affliction and sees us in our affliction.
And not only does He see our affliction, He sees at whose
hand we are being afflicted. The devil is behind all our affliction,
by God's permission, but also his wicked men. He knows he know
we don't this is a comfort to God's people. We don't have to
rebel when we're done wrong We don't have to rebel when we're
afflicted because God looks upon our affliction and he looks upon
those who are inflicting it I'll give the word to those here who
don't know the Lord Don't ever do evil to any man But especially
don't do evil to someone of God's Saints God notices it I guarantee
you. He said, touch not mine anointed
and do my prophets no harm. He regards his people as the
apple of his eye. And he said, you don't touch
my people. It'll be far worse for those who inflicted harm
upon God's people than it will for those that never even came
in contact with one of God's people. That's why I say it'll
be so horrible for a false preacher. He's inflicting the worst affliction
on God's people with his whipping and his binding and his legal
legalism. But God looked upon them and
He saw their affliction and He saw our affliction. That's what
He did in eternity. He looked and He saw in our affliction
that we'd never be able to deliver ourselves. We'd never be able
to save ourselves. And before as yet we'd fallen
in sin, He provided a savior. He provided a substitute. He
provided a surety. He provided our head who would
come forth and go to that cross on our behalf and free us from
that bondage we were in. He looked upon our affliction
He looked upon it. And when He looked upon their
affliction, He had respect unto them. He had respect unto them. God had respect to them, but
He didn't have respect to the Egyptians. He had respect to
them, but He didn't have respect to the Egyptians. He looked at
the children of Israel as the objects of His love and His mercy
and His grace. But He doesn't look at the rest
of the world that way. Just His people. Just His people. He looked upon him with an eye
of pity and compassion, just like a father. He has many children,
and his children are standing with a group of other children.
And he hears the cry of his child, and he looks upon his child,
and he has pity and compassion on his child, and he has respect
to his child, but not to the other children, because that
child is his child, and that's God. His children are His children. And He looks upon them as His
children and has respect unto them as His children in Christ
the Lord. The love of God is in Christ.
It's in Christ. God put us in Christ. God loved
us in Christ. God saves us in Christ. God blesses
us in Christ. Everything God has is in Christ.
And that's where His love and His pity and His compassion is.
It's in Christ for His people. You see, People say, well, you
know, and they'll quote the scripture to you like James and other passages
says, God's no respecter of persons. And God's not a respecter of
persons in the way that you and I respect persons. We respect
things that God doesn't respect. We respect race and wealth and
education. and sex, and morality, and so
we'll treat one man different than another man because of those
things. That sin, that's what you are in your old man, that's
what I am in my old man. It ought not to be, and to some
extent God's allowed it to be curbed a little bit in us, but
they're unleashed You and I are as judgmental as anybody else
in this world, as racist as anybody in this world, as sexist as anybody
in this world. I don't even know what some of
these new phobias mean. I don't even know what xenophobia,
what does that mean? I don't even know what that means.
Do you? Somebody tell me afterwards. I don't even know what that means.
But all these phobias the world comes up with, you got it just
like everybody else has got it. But in Christ, He sees us as
His children. But in ourselves, God doesn't
respect us for those things. Not at all. He doesn't look at
that. He sees through that. He sees
your heart. He sees my heart in our flesh. And we're nothing but sin and
corruption. There's nothing there to respect. But in Christ, with
His people in Christ, there's everything there to respect.
That's His child. That's one He's everlastingly
loved. That's one who's righteous. That's one who's holy. That's
one who's wisdom. That's one who's one with God.
That's something to respect, and that's what his people are
in Christ, because that's what Christ is to God. And so yes,
He does have respect unto His people. He looks upon His people,
and He shows them grace, and He doesn't show others grace.
He shows them mercy, and He doesn't show others mercy. Why? Because
He will. He's God. He said, I will have
compassion on whom I'll have compassion. I'll have mercy on
whom I will have mercy. Because that's the purpose of
God according to election. It's not of Him that works, but
of God that calls. And so it might be by grace and
not by work. salvation. And so God does respect. And under that covenant of works,
God said to the children of Israel what God did not say to any other
nation. Now granted, they were under
a covenant of works. And because they didn't fulfill
their end of the bargain and fulfill their end of the covenant,
this was all null and void. But this is what God says to
His people. He says, I will have respect unto you I'll make you
fruitful, I'll multiply you, and I'll establish my covenant
with you." And that God says to His people freely, freely. He freely gives this to us, and
He doesn't make any requirement on our part. It's all because
of Him and what He's done. Now in ourselves, we have nothing
worthy of respect, but in Him is everything. In Christ is everything.
I'm going to close with this, and I'm going to give you four
things to remember in light of these four things. You know,
in any time of need and at all times of need, cry unto God. Don't march, don't rebel, don't
try to affect things by making a stand and being different from
others. God teaches us not to try to
stand out from other people Religiously we're not supposed to do that.
That's self-righteousness. God hates it. It's pride but
Cry to God he will make the change He will hear you scripture says
God heard their groaning and he will hear us and Though our
love for God may wax cold and it does you and I it waxes cold
and we we forget him We forget God. There's times when you're
so wrapped up in sin you don't even think about God. And there
may come a day when our minds are gone and we won't even know
who God is. But you know that ain't how you're
going to be saved. That's not how I'm going to be saved. It's
not you knowing God, it's God knowing you. And the scripture
says God remembers His covenant. He don't ever forget it. He remembers
his covenant with Christ, and he won't ever forget it. Those
that he's loved, he's going to everlastingly love, and he's
going to everlastingly save, and he won't ever forget his
people. If we forget him, he's going
to abide true. He can't deny himself. He won't
deny Christ. He won't forget his covenant.
And then thirdly, when no one looks upon us in our trouble
and our sorrow, When you feel all alone, and you feel sometimes
God brings you to that place on purpose, because you need
to feel all alone. And He'll bring you to that place,
but when He does, He makes you to know. And we just try to remember
this, God looks upon His people all the time as though you're
the only one He's got. You remember that illustration
I gave that Mr. Spurgeon said, There's no circumference
with God in His favor and His looking upon His children. Me
and you, we can't look upon all our children at once. We gotta
put one in the background while we're looking at this one. And
that one has to wait till we get to get to them, not with
God. God is eternal, infinite, ever-present,
ever-knowing, and all-knowing, and He is all-powerful. And His
people, each one of His children, are at the sinner all the time
of his affection and his attention and his focus. He looks upon
his people all the time. Nothing happens to us that he
doesn't look upon and already predestinate. And while this
world's knowing nothing but having respect unto the people they
deem to be great and wise and all the reasons that men prejudge
other folks by, Well, God knows His people and has respect to
His people because of Christ and what we are in Christ. And
He knows His people. He knows us. Everything works
together for good to them who are the called. All things work
together for good to them who are the called, to them that
love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose
because who He foreknew. God knew His people and He knows
us in Christ. In whom He foreknew, He predestinated
to be conformed to the image of His Son that Christ might
be the firstborn among many brethren. He did it for Christ. Everything
is for Christ. And so for Christ's sake, He
looks upon us and He knows us and He has respect unto us. And
if you have those four things, I guarantee you everything will
be alright. Everything will be alright. This
right here, I'm going to read to you 2 Kings 13. This later
was renounced by God towards the children of Israel because,
as I said to you, they broke the covenant. You don't want
to be in a covenant of works. You'll do what Israel did. You
want to be in a covenant of grace, covenant of redemption, covenant
that God fulfilled. But because we are under that
covenant of grace, every saint of God, been sanctified by God,
this is going to be said of us right here. 2 Kings 13.23. The Lord was gracious unto them,
and He had compassion on them, and He had respect unto them,
because of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and
He would not destroy them, neither cast He them from His presence
as yet." You go down through eternity, as far as you can go,
and you'll be able to say that. He never cast us from His presence
yet. And he never will. That's true
of all his people. Why? Because he was gracious. Because he had compassion. Because
he had respect. Because he remembered his covenant.
He wouldn't destroy us. And he wouldn't cast us off.
Those are four things God does for his people. Aren't you glad?
What part do we do? Where was the children of Israel?
In bondage. Unable to do a thing. Being delivered. so that when they're delivered,
all they can say is, He did everything. That's the part we play. We fell
in sin so that when He delivers, we can say, God did everything. Amen.