Our text is found in 2 Samuel
chapter 4. 2 Samuel chapter 4. Now there's
two parts to this chapter here. And the first half of this chapter,
it gives us numerous examples of the weakening of Saul's house. We were told that it was waxing
weaker and weaker. And we'll see examples of his
house being made weak until it completely collapses upon itself. And the second half of this chapter
provides us with David's righteous response against those who thought
they were doing righteousness. They believed they were doing
righteousness, but in reality, it was wicked works. These were
wicked works. Now, what I want you to notice,
what I want to bring out tonight in going through this word with
you, is that we're actually seeing an outline of the fall of man
in the garden. We're seeing an outline of the
corruption and the sin of sinful man. And this is traced out in
the weakening and the collapse of Saul's house, and specifically,
we'll see of the house of Adam. of the house of Adam. Now this
is then followed by a declaration of redeeming grace. Then goes
forth a declaration of redeeming grace of God to save his people
compared to the final judgment of those who are seeking to remedy
the fall and fix their sin by their own works. They shall have
a reward of death. Those that would come to God
in their own works will not be received of God. But those that
come in the redeeming blood of Christ, trusting Christ for their
righteousness, they shall be received. They're blessed of
the true and living God. So that's the outline here of
chapter four. Now let's read the first seven
verses. And as we go through on this
half, we'll just give comment as we go through. So verse 1,
and when Saul's son heard that Abner was dead in Hebron, his
hands were feeble, and all the Israelites were troubled. Now,
there's a picture here for us. There's a lesson here just in
this. that when we would set our heart upon the flesh, upon
the strength, when we would give some value to fleshly things,
we see how in an instant these things all fall apart. These
things can be undone in an instant, so that we're taught not to trust
in princes, not to trust in man, not to trust in our own flesh,
but to trust in the true and living God. That's where there's
help. That's where there's salvation
there. And so this son of Saul, as we've
been seeing, this Ish-bosheth, he's not even named here, he's
been a weak man from the start. He has no ability. If it wasn't
for Abner, he would have never been king. He wouldn't have even
sought to be king. He would have had no strength,
no charisma, nothing, no ability to sway the people to himself. He had nothing of himself had
it not been for Abner, Saul's general. He wouldn't have been
able to do that. And now we see, had he refused
Abner and said, no, Abner, I appreciate what you're trying to do here,
making me king, but I can't do this. David is the rightful king. Had he done that, all this trouble
that we see wouldn't have even come to pass. It wouldn't have
played out as it now is. Here it tells us that his hands
are now feeble. That is, both physically he is
sick and weakened by the news of Abner's death. That was the
only man, the only pillar, the only strength in his whole house,
and that man is now dead. And his hands are feeble because
his rule was weak. His whole power was weak. And
he's now, it's all about to break apart and come down, and he doesn't
have the strength to hold it together. Verse two, and Saul's
son, so this is Ish-bosheth, continually being called Saul's
son. As I was thinking about that,
when we do anything, it could be said an Adam's son. An Adam's
son did this. An Adam's son did that. And you
just see the weakness and the fall of Adam. And Saul's son
had two men that were captains of bands. The name of the one
was Banna. and the name of the other, Reca.
The sons of Rimmon, a Beerethite, of the children of Benjamin,
and then they give us this little parenthesis, for Beeroth also
was reckoned to Benjamin, and the Beerethites fled to Gittim,
where, and were sojourners there until this day. Now, this is
a strange detail. which is given to show, again,
just the weakness of Saul's house. And this has to do with something
that Saul does. We don't know what he's done
yet, but later on in this book, in 2 Samuel, we'll see that Saul,
in his zeal, went against the Gibeonites. And Israel had had
a treaty, made peace, a covenant with the Gibeonites, so that
they would not hurt them. They were Amorites, and they
were to be destroyed, but because they made peace with them before
they knew who they were, now they're finding out that, you
know, well, Saul had no business touching them. But he goes in
there and starts putting them to death, and they fled from
before him. And the purpose is that what
he was doing was he was He was giving their lands, their vineyards,
their fruitful fields to his captains, to his generals, to
his officers in reward for supporting him. That's what he was doing
there. So it was wicked. It was wicked.
And this tells us something of the character of these two captains
that were serving Saul for gain. They were serving Saul for reward.
And then we get this other seemingly unrelated detail in verse 4.
And Jonathan, Saul's son, had a son that was lame of his feet. He was five years old when the
tidings came of Saul. And Jonathan, out of Jezreel,
and his nurse, took him up and fled And it came to pass, as
she made haste to flee, that he fell and became lame, and
his name was Mephibosheth." Now, again here, this little detail,
it shows us the weakening of Saul's house. It's falling apart,
and his son is weak. But there's actually a sweet
detail in this small account of Mephibosheth. If Mephibosheth
hadn't had this happen to him, he'd be probably 11, 12, 13 years
old around now, a good age to be made king for the weakening
Ishbosheth. Somebody could have turned to
him and made him king, but the fact that in Providence, His
feet were made lame. He was despised by the people. He was looked at as like, he
can't be king here. And so the people didn't even
consider, hey, maybe we should ask or make Mephibosheth king
now, since Ishbosheth can't do this. He's about to die. Maybe
we should turn to Mephibosheth. But the Lord, in giving him that
weakness, that infirmity in the flesh, It spared him from becoming
part of this death, this overall death and collapse of the house.
And I bring this out to say to you, in our infirmities, when
things don't go our way, when things are contrary to us, We're
weak, we're made sick, we fail, we come up short in something,
and things fall apart. And we're grieved by that, we're
saddened by that. And it's hard during that time.
But we see how our Lord is good, our Lord is wise. He knows exactly
what he's doing. All things work together for
good to them that love God, to them who are thee called according
to his purpose. Trust him. Let that comfort your
heart. when things are contrary and
not going well. Let that comfort your heart. And so now moving on though.
Verse 5 and 6, and the sons of Rimen, the Berethite, Rechab
and Baena, went and came about the heat of the day, about noontime,
to the house of Ishbosheth, who lay on a bed at noon. He's taking
a siesta. And they came thither into the
midst of the house, as though they would have fetched wheat. They went there under cover of
something else. and getting wheat, and they smote
him under the fifth rib, which is in his belly. They struck
him in his stomach. And Rechab and Baena, his brother,
escaped. And so they escaped, which means
that they got away smooth. That's what the word means behind
that word escaped. It means they got away smoothly. No one figured it out. And it
shows us just how much the house of Saul was in disarray. and
that these men could do this deed, and get away smoothly,
and listen to what it says in verse seven, and when they came
into the house, he lay on his bed, in his bedchamber, and they
smote him, and slew him, and beheaded him, and took his head,
and got them away through the plain all night. So they were able to carry a
bloody head out of the house there. with no one noticing,
no one paying attention, no one stopping them, no one even going
after them. So it's in complete disarray. Now, to the natural
man, this stuff goes on, this is everyday life. This is just
what's going on in the world today. And it's a picture of
just things happening here. But these events trace out for
us the fall of man, who brought great trouble. When Adam sinned,
he brought great trouble upon himself and all his posterity,
upon all his house, when he rebelled against God in the garden. You
think about it, Adam rebelled against the will of God. Which
is that the Lord is, our God is the Lord. And he gave him
one commandment and Adam rebelled against that will. Willfully
rebelled against God's commandment to him just as Ish-bosheth was
rebelling against God's will. And he was made king instead
of yielding to David when it was known that God's will was
that David should succeed Saul as king. And then we read of
a nurse fleeing in fear. And we're told that after Adam
ate the fruit, what did he do? When he heard the voice of God
in the garden in the cool of the day, he ran in fear to hide
himself. And what happened to his feet?
Just as Mephibosheth fell and his feet became lame, so man,
when he sinned against God, he fell, and his feet are now lame,
so that we go astray. We don't walk in the way of truth
and light. We go astray, speaking lies from
the womb, from the womb of our mother, from birth. We see this in all these things
here. Man is asleep, like Mishpasheth
on the bed. He's asleep. We're asleep, dead
in trespasses and sins, spiritually dead, unable to arise or wake
or follow the Lord and obey the Lord. And in all of this, we
wax worse and worse and worse. This flesh is wicked. It's ruined. It's corrupt. Turn over to Romans
chapter 3. Romans 3. We have an example
here in 2 Samuel 4. There's an example of the house
of Adam and the wickedness of man. And now we'll go to Romans
3 and the scriptures here. It's not my opinion. This is
the scriptures testifying. This is the conclusion of Holy
Scripture concerning all men born of Adam. We'll pick up in
verse 10. As it is written, there is none
righteous, no, not one. There's none that understandeth.
There's none that seeketh after God. And so if you think, well,
I began seeking after God. I'm the one who started this.
I looked for God first, and that's why he's kind and merciful to
me. No, you're contradicting scripture
here, which says there's none that seeketh after God. If we
seek after God, it's because God is being merciful to us. and drawing us near to himself.
They are all gone out of the way. They are together become
unprofitable. There is none that doeth good,
no not one." If we've kept the law in some way, we're not profitable. We've only done that which was
our duty to do by nature. We haven't added anything at
all. Their throat is an open sepulcher, with their tongues
they have used deceit. The poison of asps is under their
lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness." You
think of all of our opinions, our ideas, and the foolish things
that come out of our mouth are nothing but poison. They corrupt
and defile. Their feet, as we saw here in
the opening verses here, their feet are swift to shed blood.
Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace
have they not known. There is no fear of God before
their eyes. And so all these descriptions
of man are witnessed in this description here of the weakening
of Saul's house. In verse 19 of Romans 3, 319,
now we know that what thing soever the law saith, it saith to them
who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all
the world may become guilty before God. In other words, the Lord
is shutting us up of our boasting, He's causing us to stop talking
about what we're doing for the Lord and making us to see that
we are sinners, that we are vile, wretched sinners, and that when
I'm doing what I think is a good work, I'm only putting a polluted
hand on it, and I'm only doing polluted works and thinking that
they're good. Paul said it this way of the
hope of the believer in Philippians 3, verse 3, for we are the circumcision. We don't need a physical circumcision.
We need a spiritual circumcision, a removing of the flesh over
our heart and the blindness of our eyes. We need to be spiritually
circumcised, which worship God in the spirit and rejoice in
Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. That is, the works
that I'm doing, my good works or what I think are good works,
That is not my confidence of my acceptance with God, of my
understanding of God, of the blessings that I have. It's not
by my works, but by the faithfulness, the faithful work of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And he is the boast of the believer. He's our hope and joy and peace
with God. Now, What we're going to see
now in the remaining, the second half of this chapter is just
that, that our salvation is not accomplished by what we do. All of dead letter religion tells
you what you need to be doing for the Lord, what you need to
fix, what you need to get straight, what you need to be doing and
obeying and working out to obtain a righteousness with God. That's
dead letter religion. What we'll see here in this second
half is how that the Lord has accomplished the redemption and
the salvation of his people and what he reveals in us, what he
has done to save us and to establish us in perfect righteousness,
the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what we're
seeing here. So let's look back in our text
in 2 Samuel 4 verse 8. And they brought the head of
Ish-bosheth unto David to Hebron, and said to the king, Behold,
the head of Ish-bosheth the son of Saul thine enemy, which sought
thy life. And the Lord, they throw in the
Lord there. They sprinkle in him a little
bit there. And the Lord hath avenged my Lord, the king this
day of Saul and of his seed. Now, understand what these men
did here is as vile as the works of dead letter religion. This
is what the religious world does in coming to God with their works
and in their boast of what they're doing here. The deadly mistake
of man is thinking that by his works, by his sacrifices, by
his offerings, that he is the one who makes the difference
in establishing the will and purpose of God in the earth,
and that if he doesn't cooperate, God's stuck, and he can't do
it. And I'll have to figure out some other way, because man's
not letting it happen. Well, in what he does here, and
what these guys do here, they're thinking that they have severed
the head of the problem here for David. They think they've
done this. And a man in his works thinks, I can stop up the fountain
of sin. I can stop this. I can fix this.
I can make right what I've done wrong. I can make it better here.
I can make amends for the mess that I've made. I'm going to
get it straightened out. I'm going to do better. That's
what we think when we first come to the Lord, especially in dead
letter religion. That's what we're thinking. We're
led to think that it's us. It's all on us here. So these
men believe when they came here with this head, To them, they
were coming with the gift of life to David. They're saying,
hey, we're giving you the keys to the kingdom. We're giving
you everything you need, David, for you to be established in
the kingdom here, for you to establish your house and your
kingdom. And you'll be allowed to reign
as God intended it now because of what we've done here. They
said, behold, the head of Ish-bosheth, the son of Saul, thine enemy,
which sought thy life. You're free, Lord, to live as
you want to live. You can do what you want to do
now as king. You don't have to worry about this. We've taken
care of it for you. And you've triumphed over your
enemies. And so it sounds, when you look at it, it sounds like
free will religion. What man tells man to do. And free will religion insists
that God cannot save you unless you let him. Unless you do your
part, God can't do his part. He's not gonna do anything if
you don't let him have his way. And so if you've gotta let God
rule in your heart, that's what dead letter religion teaches.
You've gotta let God, otherwise God can't do it. They say make Jesus Lord and
Savior of your heart. Accept him into your heart today
and make him Lord and Savior. Well, we're too late. God has
already done that. Peter declared to the Jews, saying
that God hath made the same Jesus whom ye crucified, both Lord
and Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is Lord.
He is the Savior. The Father hath made him so.
Man doesn't make Christ Lord and Savior. It's not your decision
that saved you. It's not my decision. It's what
God has purposed and what God accomplishes for his people.
And free, sovereign grace makes God's lost sheep to hear this
word, to hear of the Lord Jesus Christ and what he has accomplished.
And by His grace and power, we bow before Him. And we confess,
Lord, save me. Lord, have mercy on me. Count
me in that number, Lord. Please save me. Don't leave me
to myself. The Lord does that. He's the
one that turns the heart to Christ. He's the one that turns us, gives
us repentance from dead-letter religion that cannot save to
look to Christ and say, if the blood of Christ doesn't save
me, I can't be saved at all because I'm a sinner and unable to save
myself. And so we see here in the gospel
that all of salvation is of the Lord. As Jonah said, salvation
is of the Lord. Not the Lord plus you, not you
plus the Lord, not you plus me and the Lord. Salvation is of
the Lord from beginning to end. everything that we need, he provides. Even our repentance, even our
crying out to him, Abba Father, is all of his spirit of adoption
being given to us and turning us from death, and turning us
from having a vain confidence in the flesh, and showing us
time and time again how often, even when we were in darkness,
even when we were cold, even when we were astray, yet the
Lord revealed Himself to us and delivered us out of it and turned
us back into the way again, to obey Him, to hear Him, to cry
out to Him for grace and mercy. And what it's saying here is
that the stain of sin And the condemnation of sin and the wretchedness
of sin and the wickedness of sin and the evil of it goes much
deeper than what you and I and our works are able to purge out
and fix. It goes to a place that we can't
reach by our works and by our flesh and by our form of religion. We can't do it. Turn over to
Matthew 3. I'm gonna show you something
in Matthew 3 with John the Baptist. John Baptist was preaching the
baptism of repentance. And he was preaching the baptism
of repentance that men should repent. He's saying the Messiah,
the Christ is coming. He's right behind me. Stop looking
to your dead work. Stop trusting yourself. Stop putting your faith and confidence
in what you're doing And listen, the Lord is coming, the Christ
is coming. Get ready, prepare your hearts,
he's coming. He's turning us from dead things. And so Matthew
three, verse seven. But when he saw, John Baptist
saw, many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism,
he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you
to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits,
meat for repentance. And think not to say within yourselves,
we have Abraham to our father. For I say unto you that God is
able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. Can a stone do anything? to gain the interest of God,
to merit God's favor. Can a stone do anything? No,
it's dead. It's as dead as a rock. That's
what it is. It's dead. It has no life in
it. And that's a picture of you and
me by nature. We are dead stones, dead stones. But it's our God, it's Christ,
who makes us living stones. And it's him who makes us children
of the living God, who did nothing to save ourselves, added nothing
to God, brought no works to God. Just like a stone can bring nothing
to God, it must be God that does it. That's the picture there,
that we don't do it, that it's not of us, but of God. You that
hear, praise God. you that believe, praise God,
because it's him that works that in us. Verse 10, And now also
the axe is laid unto the root of the trees, therefore every
tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast
into the fire. You and I, by nature, our flesh
doesn't bring forth good fruit. That good fruit is of Christ
the righteous. He is that tree that always bears
its fruit in season. He is the blessed man. He is
the man that is blessed of God, the God-man come to save his
people from beginning to end. John said, I indeed baptize you
with water unto repentance." This is just preparing your hearts. But there's one that cometh after
me who is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear.
He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. In other words, There's a life,
there's a regeneration. Our first generation is Adam. We are regenerated, reborn of
Christ's seed, made alive by the Spirit. Something we don't
do, but he does it. Whose fan is in his hand and
he will throughly purge his floor and gather his wheat into the
garner. but he will burn up the chaff
with unquenchable fire." You know, I just found it very interesting
there that these two captains, these two men from Beeroth, They
went into the house, Ish-bosheth's house, as though they were going
to fetch wheat. Man doesn't fetch the wheat.
We don't bring, we don't gather ourselves or others to the Lord
by our works. He gathers the wheat into his
barn. He's the one that gathers his sheep. Together, all the
works of man are burned up and come to nothing. They come to
nothing. They're chaffed to be burned
up. All right, now back in verse nine. 2 Samuel 4 verse 9. And David answered Recab and
Bainah his brother, the sons of Rimen the Beerithite, and
said unto them, as the Lord liveth, who hath redeemed my soul out
of all adversity. Here's the thing that dead letter
religion overlooks. And David confessed it. He said,
as the Lord liveth, who hath redeemed my soul out of all adversity. What he's saying is, your works
have added nothing. Your works have added nothing
to the Lord's work, to His will. He's the one who has established
me every time in His redemption, in His blood. He's the one who
has delivered me. The anger, the wrath of man adds
nothing. to the righteousness of God.
And then David's also saying it's done, right? Redemption
is not a thing to be done. It's a thing already accomplished
by the Lord God, by the Lord Jesus Christ. And he saw it before
it came to pass. He saw the redemption of the
Lord. He saw the spiritual blessings
of God in heavenly places in Christ Jesus given to him. by
that promised redemption of him that would come and crush the
head of the serpent. He saw that and believed. How much more are we now who
see the redemption, right, can trust and depend upon the promises
that are yet to come? Don't cast away your hope. Don't
be deceived by this world and the temptations of this world
and what it does. Trust the Lord. Stay upon him. Cry out to Him, stay upon Him
to keep you. And so all that we need, David
said, He provided it for me. You've added nothing to me. You've
added nothing to God's work. Your works haven't added anything
to what He's already accomplished. And so this is the promise of
our God. This speaks to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the promised
seed that should crush the head of the serpent and deliver us
from the bondage of his house, and take us out from underneath
that dominion. And David adds this in verse
10 and 11, when one told me, saying, behold, Saul is dead,
thinking to have brought good tidings, I took hold of him and
slew him in Ziklag, who thought that I would have given him a
reward for his tidings. And a more literal translation
of that is, I took hold of him and killed him in Ziklag. I gave
that to him as his reward. That's what the works of man
earn. All right, the wages of sin is
death. And that's what David's saying,
is your works aren't righteous works. Your works are of the
flesh. And you think by this to obtain
a reward of me, right? A picture of dead letter religion,
thinking to obtain a reward from God for our works and what we've
done to try and obtain his favor. Well, what we'll obtain, what
we'll be rewarded with is death. spiritual, eternal death. And so the reason why, the reason
what the Lord is teaching us here is that when we continue
to look to the law, for our righteousness. And we try to obey the law at
taking our eyes off of Christ and putting them on the law,
which we're told is fulfilled by Christ, so that we're no longer
under the law. We're saved by grace through
faith. We're under the law of liberty,
under faith. We love our brethren. We love
our Lord and our brethren because of his grace, because of his
spirit, because of his life in us, so that we're not looking
to the law for righteousness. Because any of us who have tried
to keep the law know that in looking to the law, we're not
looking to Christ. And we start beating ourselves
and guilting ourselves and coming under condemnation and looking
to the law rather than looking to Christ and crying out to Christ. There's a problem. He stirs us
up and makes us to know it. And we begin to cry out, Lord,
save me. And he does. He does help us.
He does strengthen us. He does chasing us. He does teach
us and turn us to himself, and the law can never do it. Because
the law will make us hard, cold, stiff, indifferent, condemning
of others. When we think we've achieved
something, we start looking at others and saying, well, I did
it. How come you can't figure it out? And it just creates division
and biting and tearing apart one another. And so, the Lord
is showing us here that when we would look to our works under
the law for a righteousness, we are despising the righteousness
of God given in his Son. We're trampling that blood underfoot. because we have no confidence
that He is able to save us to the uttermost. Hebrews 10.29
says of how much sore punishment, suppose ye shall he be thought
worthy who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God, and hath counted
the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing,
and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace. And so Christ
must save, else we cannot be saved at all. And that's what
the Lord is teaching us here. If we would come to him as Baena
and Rechab did, the sons of Rimen, the Beerithite, if we would come
in that way with our works, our reward is death. Come to the
Lord trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe him. Otherwise,
if we remain willfully ignorant to the gospel, to the hope that
he's given us in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we go back to the
law, trying to bear a yoke that neither the Jews nor the Jewish
fathers could bear, what makes you think we're going to do any
better under the law? They were set apart as a nation
to do that, and they couldn't keep the law perfectly. How much
less are we going to be able to do it? And so if we do that,
this is the end there, verse 12, and David commanded his young
men and they slew them, and cut off their hands and their feet,
and hanged them up over the pool in Hebron. But they took the
head of Ishbosheth, and buried it in the sepulchre of Abner
in Hebron, so that all who came to the pool to get water at Hebron
saw these two wretched creatures hung there with no hands and
no feet. As a reminder, just as they are
a reminder here to us in our day, to see their works and what
they thought, the ignorance they thought, that they could make
themselves righteous. Their hands were removed. Why?
Because with their hands, they shed blood. And they thought,
by our works, we're working righteousness here. And their hands were removed.
Their feet were removed. Why? Because they carried that
evil report of what they had done, thinking it was something,
and they carried the head of Ishbosheth, thinking they were
going to get a reward for what they had done. And as I was wrapping
this thing up, as I was thinking about this, isn't it strange
that dead letter religion teaches that same thing? Have you ever
heard that where they say, the Lord hath no hands but your hands,
and he hath no feet but your feet. He has no eyes but your
eyes, and no mouth but your mouth. Right? If you don't do it, God
can't do anything. That's what dead letter religion
teaches us. But that's an ignorant thing
to say. because the scriptures teach
that that's the idol God that has no hands and no feet and
no eyes and no mouth. I'll read it from Psalm 115 if
you want to turn there and read it with me just so you know where
it is and you can go back to it. Psalm 115 and verse 4 through
8. All right, verse four. 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. And so these
men were made just like their idol God. They thought they would
get a reward. That they were, with their hands
and their feet, they had done these good works. And the Lord
said, these are wicked works. Wicked works. Because you're
trusting in these works for a reward. And that's something that the
Lord delivers us from and teaches us. When we start thinking like
that, he must teach us. And through the gospel, he does
teach us and turn us from vain, dead, fleshly religion. And it's his mercy to do that.
It's his mercy to show us these things and teach us these things. And so we see here how that all
are ruined in Adam. And the way that is fixed, the
way we are delivered from our death and ruin and sin and Adam
is not by doing better. It's not by trying to get religious.
It's not by following the law. It's not by just doing religious
things and trying to do good works and call myself a Christian
and just try to be better. That's not salvation. That's
dead letter religion. I know it. I've been part of
it. It's still in my members. It's still in my flesh. I still
have an Arminian heart that looks to, uh-oh, I better fix this
and do better. By the grace of God, we cry out,
Lord, save me. Have mercy upon me. Keep looking
to Christ. He is the salvation of God for
sinners. He is the Savior, and He's able
to save us to the uttermost. We don't try to sin and do foolishly,
but we cry out to Him for the grace to save us from it, to
turn our hearts, to keep us from it, and to give us a heart full
of love, of faith and faithfulness, of kindness and gentleness toward
one another, to be kind toward one another, and not to wrong
or harm anybody, but to trust the Lord, that we don't have
to turn to the flesh to get things. He gives us all that we need.
Trust Him. Rest in Him for it. And you that hear and believe,
it's because He's redeemed you. and giving you a spirit who raised
you from the dead and gave you life in the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's the hope that he gives us, brethren. Amen.