Brethren, let's be turning to 2 Samuel chapter 5. 2 Samuel 5. I want to open where we left off last week in verses 4 and 5, and then the beginning of verse 6. We're told there that David was 30 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 40 years. In Hebron he reigned over Judah 7 years and 6 months, and in Jerusalem he reigned 30 and 3 years over all Israel and Judah. And the king and his men went to Jerusalem.

The subtle or not so subtle sense here in this is that we see a similitude, a similarity between David and our Lord where it tells us that David was about 30 years old when he began to reign, when he began to be the king. And the reason why there's a similarity there is that our Lord Jesus Christ entered into, he began his public ministry at his baptism. And Luke telling us that he was about 30 years old when he began to minister. And we're also told of Hebron. Now David reigned in Hebron. And Hebron is a city, according to Joshua, the book of Joshua, we're told that that was one of the cities given to the priests of Aaron. That was a priestly city, a high priest's city. And now we're told about Jerusalem, David going to Jerusalem, and how that is the city of the kings. If Hebron's the city of the priests, then Jerusalem is the city of the king. And both those offices were fulfilled and accomplished righteously, perfectly by the Lord Jesus Christ, who when the time was come that he should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem.

And so there's a picture in David. among many pictures, there's a picture here of the Lord Jesus Christ coming for his city to redeem, to save his city. And so in our text this evening, David's gonna go to Jerusalem and he's gonna take it and make it the city of David. And that's the subject here that we're looking at. And I wanna make six points from verses six through 10. That's gonna be our text tonight, verses six through 10. making six points.

And the first point that we are gonna make here is just in reference to this text, verses six through 10, is that this account, what we're gonna see here is a picture of the redemption, of the salvation of our Lord, Jesus Christ, for his people. This picture's the salvation that our Lord brings to us when he delivers us out of bondage, out of darkness, out of that kingdom of death. And so this city here is a picture of New Jerusalem, come down from heaven, from God. New Jerusalem, which is redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a picture of the salvation of Christ's body, his church.

The second thing, the second point that comes from these verses here, comes from the fact that David has to take this city. David must take this city. And the reason why David must take it is, well, the tribe of Judah didn't push out the inhabitants that were living there, nor did the tribe of Benjamin push out the inhabitants that were living there. We're told in Joshua 15, verse 63, that as for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, that's who was living there right now, these Jebusites, the children of Judah could not, they could not drive them out. They tried, but they could not drive them out. but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day. And then we're told, just a little while after, in Judges chapter one, verse 21, that the children of Benjamin did not, they did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem, but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem unto this day.

Well, like the failure of Judah, and the failure of Benjamin to rid their land of the Jebusites, so every believer born of the corrupt seed of Adam has failed, has been unsuccessful to drive out the Jebusites and the Philistines and the Canaanite inhabitants out from this flesh, out from the members of our body. Paul reminding us of a very present law that we are familiar with, that we know that when I would do good, evil is present with me. There are yet Jebusites, Philistines, Canaanites in the members of my flesh.

Whether you find that you cannot drive out sin from you as you would, or you find that you will not drive out sin from you as you would, the point isn't for you to try harder. That's what dead letter religion teaches you. They give you how-tos. And they show you how you can be rid of these things, how you can improve. That's dead letter religion. You cannot improve yourself. You don't do it. You either cannot or you will not. But you're not driving them out, just as Judah and Benjamin were not able to drive out the Jebusites from Jerusalem.

It took the king. It took the king. It's not for you to try harder. It's to turn you from trusting dead letter religion and form religion and reforming yourself and doing better. And it's to turn you to the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone is able to deliver you from the evil and the wickedness, and to put that away by the washing of his blood so that God does not hold you accountable for those things.

Oh, he'll teach you. He'll chasten you. He'll keep you. He'll grow you in Christ, but you're always going to be leaning on Christ. You're always going to be depending upon Him. You're going to trust Him for salvation. As Paul was driven to say in Romans 7.24, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord, so then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, that is, the law of faith, trusting him, trusting his word of promise.

I know your sins. I know your iniquities. I have washed them. I have put them away. I have blessed you in my son. I have obtained forgiveness for you by the death and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're going to trust his grace to save me through Christ. We're going to trust him to do it. But with the flesh, the law of sin, it's there. Sin occupies the land. And we cannot deliver ourselves of its strongholds. We don't drive them out. We don't drive them out of the battlements and the walls and all its fortresses and bulwarks set up against us to keep us in bondage. We don't do it.

Before Christ, we thought we were to do that. We turned to religion. We tried harder. We trusted and prayed to our idols in our attempts to worship God. And all those things served to mock the true and living God. It just showed that we weren't hearing Christ's word, that he is the Savior. We were just going right on by him and doing our own thing. We didn't believe him. We didn't see him. We didn't trust him.

He said to the Jews, you search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life. And you're missing who they're testifying of. They are they which testify of me. You're not seeing that. It's speaking of me. I'm your savior. I'm your deliverer. And you're still trying to push these things out by your works and by your doing. And you're not going to do it.

Christ does it. Christ grows us. Christ teaches us. Christ keeps us. Christ corrects us. He grows us under the preaching of the gospel. Feeding upon Him, He turns our hearts. He corrects us as it pleases Him. You're never going to root out all your sin. You're never going to do it. You might put away a few bad habits and pick up different habits, but you're never going to put away the sin that corrupts us and makes us deserving of hell. We're not going to do it. He does it.

He does it. And so except God, we would put forth effort and except God intervene and save us, we'll just keep on spinning our wheels. We'll keep on spending and laboring and striving and trying to save ourselves, thinking that that's what God is telling us to do. We'll attach the name Jesus to it, but we keep on doing the same thing under the law that we always did, trying to save ourselves and make a righteousness for ourselves.

Paul said it this way of his own countrymen in Romans 10, verse 2 through 4. He said, I bear them record. that they have a zeal of God. I mean, these guys were ready to give up their own lives just to kill me, Paul said. They were ready to sacrifice themselves just to put me to death. They have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. They do not believe God. How do I know that? They do not trust Christ to save them. They're not trusting him. He's become like a good luck charm to them.

And they aim to please him by their works, by their religious works, by their good works, by trying harder to make themselves holy. And all the while, they're just not hearing the word of Christ. As our Lord said in John 8, you won't come to me because you're not hearing my word. You don't understand my word because my word is not in you. You don't have my word. You don't believe my word.

Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. And so men can be very religious, very zealous. They can put on a form, an outward form of it, for a God that they know nothing of. And except God intervene and stop them from man's mad dash to hell, to hell they'll go. thinking all the while that they were pleasing God, that they were feeding and taking care of Christ and doing what they were supposed to do, and he tells them, you didn't do it. You didn't serve me. You didn't do any of those things.

But if God, who is rich in mercy, quicken us together with Christ, for by grace you are saved, if God raise us up together and make us sit together in heavenly places with Christ Jesus, If God show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus, then we shall be saved. For by grace are you saved, through faith, and not that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. God saves by grace. Not for you to just take His name on your lips and then try to work harder to rid yourself of every sin. Your focus is on the wrong thing.

Put your eyes on Christ, and Christ will heal you. Christ will give you a heart. What you do will then be done as a new man in Christ Jesus, rather than as a man still trying to get some peace and confidence so that you can die and not be afraid. If you're focusing on what you're doing and not doing, you're never going to have peace. You're never going to have confidence. You're always going to be afraid to die. But if your eyes are turned upon Jesus Christ, and you hear the word that he's given his life for you, that he's shed his blood for the remission of your sins, to put them away. Trust him to do it. Believe him that he has done it, in spite of what you see in yourselves. If you see something in you you don't like, lay it before him. Ask him for the grace. Ask him for the spirit. Ask him for the will and the desire and to turn your heart from him. He's able. He's able, and he'll do it. And he does it, each one of us. What bothers me may not bother you. What bothers you may not bother me. And he does it in such a way because he's shaping us and putting us in the body as it pleases him. And we grow and learn these things with the increase of God, not by our cutting and slicing and deforming ourselves and one another by the cutting that we would do of the flesh. going after something and focusing on it, instead of trusting the Lord and crying out to Him for grace and mercy. He's able, brethren. That's the point. He's able.

Now, that picture of what our Lord must do for His elect children and what He does do for them is pictured for us here in these verses in our text. Let's read verses 6 through 8. 2 Samuel 5, 6 through 8. And the king and his men went to Jerusalem. unto the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, which spake unto David, saying, Except thou take away the blind and the lame, thou shalt not come in hither, thinking, David cannot come in hither. They were so sure, so confident, that they would repel him. Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion, the same as the city of David. And David said on that day, Whosoever getteth up to the gutter, And that's believed to be or understood to be a ditch or a moat. Or if it is a water spout, something that would drain that water off the roof and drop it into the moat to be an extra defensive measure in their stronghold there, their fortified city. And it's like a gutter like we have, where the water runs down it and the filth and debris runs down it. It's a gutter. It's a gutter. And whoever getteth up to the gutter and smiteth the Jebusites, throw them down into the ditch, throw them into the gutter, and the lame and the blind that are hated of David's soul, he shall be chief and captain. Wherefore, they said, the blind and the lame shall not come into the house.

All right, so this is our third point here that we see in type of what our Lord does to save his people. His people here are pictured as the city. the city, not the inhabitants of the city, but the city itself. That is the body, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is a picture of what he does to deliver us from the rule and the dominion and the influence of the devil, our adversary. Now, to see this, we're going to look at these verses here with two interpretations from the commentators. All the commentators noted these two things. Some just said, I don't even want to deal with it and get into the particulars and just skirt it around the whole thing. But most everybody had these two interpretations. And what we'll see is they both serve to declare the grace of God to us. Both are necessary. Both are done by our Lord Jesus Christ. And I believe that's why he allows some passages to have that gray area where it could be this or it could be that. Because either way, both are true. Both serve to picture what our Lord Jesus Christ must do to save us and does do for us.

All right, so the first is a literal translation where the blind and the lame are set up on these bulwarks, on these lines there behind the protections and the walls, the high walls and whatnot. They were set up there. as guards, as a defense for the city, to repel David's army, to repel his advances. And the sense here is that the people of that city were so confident, so confident in what they had built, with their parapets, I guess they would call them, their bulwarks, their towers, high towers, and the thickness of the walls, and the highness of the walls, and all the spikes maybe pointing down against them, and the ability to pour oil and defend themselves. Whatever it was, they were confident in it, and so confident that they said, we'll put up blind people and lame people up there, and you're still not getting in. You're still not going to be able to get in here. And they trusted that they would repel David. They had repelled all the other people before this, and so they thought they could do it.

Now, these blind and the lame, these are not those spoken of in the gospel. We're familiar with those terms, the blind and the lame. We've just seen them in Luke chapter 14, right? These are not the sinners that are bidden to come to Christ. This is a picture of the Sadducees and the Pharisees, the scribes and the lawyers and the doctors of the law that men trusted in. and men who trusted in themselves and their abilities so that they refused Christ. They did not trust Christ. They did not hear Christ. They didn't believe Him. Christ said in Matthew 15, verses 13 and 14, He answered and said, Every plant which my heavenly Father hath planted, hath not planted, shall be rooted up. You can put those blind men and those lame men up there, but if God hasn't planted them, they're going to be taken up and cast down. Let them alone, he said, they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch, or as David said, the gutter. They're going to be cast down into the gutter with all the rest of the filth and refuse and be washed away. they'll be destroyed. So they'd be the ones falling into the ditch as the defeated blind and lame were when David came in and took the city. He defeated them. And so these were teachers who thought they saw and understood.

In another place, our Lord said, for judgment I am coming to this world, that they which see not might see. That's you and I that are broken. That's you and I that are made to know that we are sinners who cannot save ourselves. We don't see. We confess, Lord, I'm confused. Lord, I don't understand. Lord, I don't know how to save myself. Lord, I don't know how to please you. Lord, have mercy on me. That's you that see not. And Christ says, I've come into the world so that you might see, that you would see Christ, that you would see the salvation of God. And that though you don't see in yourself what you would see, but you see in Him the beauty of God, the beauty of holiness, the beauty of righteousness. And you know He's of the Father. He's my Savior. He saved me. He died for me and saved me. So we see Him. But they would see those who are all studied up and doctored up in doctrine and understanding. And they know God. And they know the scriptures. And they know the confessions. And they know how to do it. And they know how to fix you. He says, they're going to be made blind. They're not going to see me. They're not going to see that I am the savior of my people, who are needy sinners, who are humbled and broken and lame and maimed and blind and poor. That's who I came for. And that's what we see there.

Now, what these self-righteous protectors, these guards, these teachers of the people were doing in Christ's day is they were mocking Christ. Everything Christ said, they opposed. If Christ did a miracle and healed someone, someone like born blind, meaning he probably didn't even have eyeballs in his socket, and he healed that man and gave him eyes and gave him eyesight, or that withered man's hand, grew back and came back, or that poor woman bent over like this, couldn't look up, and he raised her up, and they would find some fault with him. Always a fault. Always something to pick on. Always something to disagree and oppose and reject that he is the Christ-sent of the Father. And so they'd mock him, and they'd argue against him, and they eventually took him, and with wicked hands, crucified and slain. I put him to death. And they thought they had him. They thought, we got him. We got the heir, and the inheritance is ours now. We'll take it from here.

We'll turn over to Psalm chapter 2, or Psalm 2, the second Psalm. Psalm 2, and we'll pick up in verse 2 and just read down to verse 6. Psalm 2. speaks of the triumphant victory of the Lord Jesus Christ. You that trust in him, you have the victory in Christ. The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together. We're in verse two. Against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us. We don't want them binding us. We're going to put people in bondage. We don't want their bondage. And he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. Is carnal man who would seek to destroy the work of the Lord, the hand of the Lord, the will of the Lord, are they going to be able to do it? Are they going to be able to destroy what God has started? If God opens a door, can man shut it? If God closes a window, can man open it? No. Now God will do His will perfectly. Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath, and vex them in His sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. And this is exactly what is said that David did. In verse 7, nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion, the same as the city of David. He overthrew all those who fought against him, and he did so triumphantly.

I'll read from Colossians chapter 2, verse 14 and 15, where it says, blotting out. This is what our Lord accomplished on the tree, on the cross. He blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us. We are under the law of sin, and the strength of that of the law of Moses there is sin, that we're sinners. We're lawbreakers by nature. He blotted out that handwriting that was against us. He put it away. He satisfied it once and for all, which was contrary to us. It was against us. And he took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. When he died, it was put to death, because you and I were put to death to it. We're no longer married to that law at all, at all. We don't even look to it to try and keep that law for righteousness. It has no voice. No more than a husband that has died has no more control over you. Nothing to say to you. Nothing to say at all to you. What he wanted, you don't have to do it anymore if you don't like doing it that way. You do it your way, because he's not your husband anymore. And so you're delivered from that. from that law. And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it." He's triumphed over them. So that's what we see there.

And David taking the city, it is a picture of the triumph of the Lord Jesus Christ to save his people, his heavenly Jerusalem, so that we're not in bondage. We're not in bondage like that Jerusalem that's there now. We're not in bondage. Now, related to this triumph is also the second understanding here, that the blind and the lame, what it refers to there, the other understanding is that this refers to idols, false idols of the gods of these people who trusted them to defend their city. It was very common for people to have idols that they trusted and prayed to and sacrificed to, to protect them, to protect their city, to provide rains and sun for their foods and things like that, or they had many different gods for those purposes. And then the blind and the lame being called that, being referenced there, would be what David would have called them. Because the Jews, they knew that the idols were dead idols, that they were vain idols. They knew that those idols, those gods that they trusted in were idol gods. And the Jebusites dwelled among them. And they would have known what the Jews thought of their gods, because they would have heard them say, those are idols. They're blind. They're deaf. They can't even move. They can't do anything. And you guys trust in these dead, blind, lame idols that can do nothing for you. And so these idols of men are just blind and lame.

Let's see this over in Psalm 115. Turn there. Psalm 115. And we'll go to verse 4. 4 through 9. Their idols. Psalm 115, verse 4. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have mouths, but they speak not. Eyes have they, but they see not. They have ears, but they hear not. Noses have they, but they smell not. They have hands, but they handle not. Feet have they, but they walk not. Neither speak they through their throat. They that make them are like unto them, so is everyone that trusteth in them. O Israel, trust thou in the Lord. He is their help and their shield.

So this is the same God. These idol gods are the gods that men, who even if they call themselves Christians, are appealing to you, to their hearers, and telling them, you've got to do more. You've got to give more. You've got to try harder. And they lay on you guilt and suffering and burdens that they can't bear, but they put them on you to bear. Saying that God has no hands but your hands and no feet but your feet, he can't do anything except you do it for him. He has no ability to save anyone unless you give him permission. God can't save you unless you let him. You gotta ask him. You've got to let him save you. That's not true. That's not the god of the scriptures. That's the idol god of man. That's the idol god of vain, dead-letter religion. But that's not the god of man. God doesn't need our permission. God turns our hearts, whithersoever he will turn it. And he'll make us to sit down. He'll make us to lie down in green pastures. He'll come in and send His Holy Spirit before to open the door to Him and to cry out to Him and seek Him for grace and mercy. He does that. The only reason why we turn to the Lord and have a heart for the Lord is because He's turned us and given us a heart for Him. Otherwise, we would never turn to Him. We would never believe Him.

And so those that trust those gods, it could be said of them, they have a form of godliness, right? They're religious, but they deny the power thereof. They have no confidence in God to do what he says in his word that he does for his people. He does it. And so our Lord reveals that he is the God who throws down the vain idols of man, the things that man trusts in. He destroys these refuges that sinful man run to and hide in and flee to. And that's why Paul speaks of that in 2 Corinthians 10.5, saying that by the gospel, every vain imagination of man is cast down and brought into submission to Christ. When the Lord will save a person, he'll deliver them from their vain idols and their false refuges. All right, now Christ said in Luke 11, verse 20 through 22, He said to the Jews, if I with the finger of God cast out devils, I had a picture of these idols being cast down from the city, no doubt the kingdom of God has come near, come upon you. When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace. But when a stronger than he shall come upon him and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armor wherein he trusted and divided his spoils. And so our savior is able to deliver us out from under the rule and out from that kingdom of darkness to open the prison door and to call his child out into the light to show ourselves to him.

And doesn't it say in John 3 as well that those that are his, they come into the light and they confess that God hath done this. God has wrought this. God has done this great victory. It wasn't me turning to God first and asking him. He sought me out. He gave me a new heart. He gave me a new spirit. He opened my ear. He worked my heart and prepared my heart to hear that word, to receive it, and to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He gave me his spirit and faith to believe him, to see him and trust him.

" Now, that language there, verse 8, where it says at the end, wherefore they said the blind and the lame shall not come into the house, it's believed that a better understanding of that is they would have said, if you can reach these blind and lame gods, as you call them. If you can reach them, the defenders of our city, and cast them down, then we will no longer worship these gods. We won't go into the house of their worship. will forsake them. If you can do that, well, they did it. And that is a beautiful picture here, of the literal blind and lame guards and then the vain idols that this city was under their rule and protection. In either case, it shows what Christ must do to deliver his people out from that body of sin. He must drive out the teachers of blindness. He must drive out our blindness, take away our blindness. He must heal our lameness. He must do this for us, to give us sight of Him, to give us feet that walk by faith in the truth of his gospel to him, that are drawn to him by faith and walk in that light and that faith which he's done for us. He must drive out the vain idols that we hold in our heart and walk under and trust in and think that these things save us. He's the one that must do this for us.

And so in either case, we see how that As David delivered this city, so the Lord Jesus Christ delivers us from death and provides for us everything that we need for salvation. And he has become our king. He's our Lord and our Savior, and God has done this for us.

Now, the fourth point that must be made is the swiftness of which David took possession of this city. Let's just read verse 6 and 7 again. And the king and his men went to Jerusalem, unto the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, which spake unto David, saying, Except thou take away the blind in the lane, thou shalt not come in hither, thinking David cannot come in hither. in spite of everything they did and said and thought they would do. Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion, the same as the city of David. It doesn't even get into the details. It was really just a very minor dust up there. They couldn't repel him or stop him or do anything that they thought that they were going to do. It just happened like that. It just fell with ease.

And so it is, in the day of grace, When God comes to you, when Christ comes to you and reveals himself to you and drives away the vain idols and takes away the blindness in the midst of darkness and reveals to you the mystery of godliness, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory, what he's done for you, then you are delivered. It doesn't matter if you never live another day after that. You are as fit to go to heaven and dwell in the presence of God as you're ever going to be. When He delivers you, He delivers you.

Now, you may grow, right? If He keeps you on this earth, there will be a patient growth in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. If you're His, there will be a patient growth from that point forward because He gives His Spirit, right? He teaches you. He instructs you. He heals you. of that darkness and that deadness. He strips those grave cloths off of you, as he stripped off of Lazarus, had those men take them off. A picture of the gospel being preached to his people. And that soul is immediately delivered.

And this is the fifth point here. In verse 9, we see it. So David dwelt in the fort, and called it the city of David. And David built round about from Melo and inward." And so the Lord, he plants his flag, his banner in our hearts. Christ dwells in our hearts by faith, and he builds out. He prepares and builds up. different walls, various walls and various protections and puts you where he will put you in the body and he fits you and plants you and grows you and blesses you as it pleases him as we see here with David in this city here.

Now turn to Isaiah four and we see this Isaiah four and verse three through six. Isaiah 4, 3-6 And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem. when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning. and the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night. For upon all the glory shall be a defense.

" Whatever your day, whatever you're going through, light or darkness, He makes us to see Him, He's present, He's there in our midst and He is leading us and keeping us.

And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat and for a place of refuge and for a covert from the storm and from rain.

And so this is the work of the Holy Spirit which is given to us by Christ to direct our hearts to the refuge which is Christ. That we would be shielded and protected from the fiery judgment of God. And that when his judgment is raining down upon the world, we have a place to flee to for refuge out of the rain, and out of the cold, and out of the bitter, and out of the dark.

He, Christ, is our all, our provision of salvation.

And that brings us to our sixth and final point. that we see here that he shall not fail to accomplish all that he purposes to do in saving his people. Verse 10, and David went on and grew great, and the Lord God of hosts was with him.

You know, as long as the Lord leaves us here, assembles us together as a body, and gives us this word to feed upon him, Though your body weaken and wither, aren't you strengthened in Christ? Don't you love him more and more? The more you hear of him and the more you see his beauties and glories, he strengthens you in the new man, in the new man. Because that's a picture of our Lord growing great in the hearts of his people. Growing great in that new man and that hope that you have fixed in him.

Again, so long as we look at us, we aren't very encouraged at all. But as we look at him, we're very encouraged and greatly helped by him.

And so that's what the Lord does for his people. That's why he feeds you and gives you the gospel, assembles you here to hear his word and to rejoice in him, because it pleases him. It pleases him to keep his word to you. Amen.