Well, that certainly is what
I'm going to attempt to do tonight. Tell the story saved by grace.
If you would, open your Bibles with me again to Genesis chapter
16. I've titled the message this evening,
Thou God, Seest Me. Now this Scripture, chapter 16
of Genesis that we read earlier, is the start of a story humanly
speaking, makes me sad pretty much every time I read it. We
know from what the Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 4, we read
that earlier too, we know that this story is given to us as
a picture, an allegory, Paul said, of the two kinds of religions
in the world. Salvation by works, salvation
by grace. And if the Holy Spirit hadn't
moved Paul to give us that explanation and tell us this story is an
allegory, we would think Well, this is just another sad story.
It's a sad story of how the ramifications of the bad decisions of the elders
just last for generations. Generations later, pay for them.
Sometimes, as in our example this evening, somebody's bad
decision can affect the world in a negative way for thousands
of years. I mean, it's just what's happened
from this. The Arabs descended from Ishmael. And that nation is just as God
described it here, aren't they? They're wild, they're against
every nation. Every nation is against them.
And they dwell right in the midst of their brethren. They live
right next door to Israel. They're lobbing bombs and things
at each other all the time. I mean, you just look at the
problems this thing has caused the world for centuries. But
this story, as sad as it is humanly speaking, is a picture of salvation. It makes me sad for the people
that, you know, this actually, this happened to real people
now, but this is a great picture of salvation by grace. And like
I said, I feel sorry for Hagar. She never asked for any of this.
I feel sorry for Ishmael. He never asked for any of it.
All this came about because of a plan Abraham and Sarah cooked
up because they were not content to wait on the Lord to fulfill
his promise. They weren't content. They just,
they jumped ahead and thought they had to do something. And
this is what happened. So verse one, Genesis chapter
16. Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bearing no children. And she
had a handmaid, an Egyptian whose name was Hagar. Sarai said unto
Abram, behold, now the Lord hath restrained me from bearing. I
pray thee go in unto my maid. It may be that I may obtain children
by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice
of Sarai, In Syria, Abram's wife took Hagar, her maid, the Egyptian,
after Abram had dwelt 10 years in the land of Canaan, and gave
her to her husband, Abram, to be his wife. Now, Lord willing,
we'll look at this in a little more detail next week. But you
see this, this is a picture of salvation by works. And it's
been 10 years. You think what was happening
in your life 10 years ago. I mean, in some ways, 10 years can go
like that. In some ways, it's a long time. It's been 10 years
since the Lord made this promise to Abraham that he and Sarah
would have a son. 10 years later, no baby. And Sarah says, now
Abraham, it's obvious to me, I'm not going to have a child.
So the Lord must want us to help him out. The Lord must have meant
I could have a child by one of my servants because it's obvious
I'm not going to have one. If I, if one of my slaves and
servants can, can have a child and I can call that child mine
because you know, they all belong to me. So Abraham, you take my
slave Hagar to be your wife and you have a child with her and
I'll call him mine. Now that is one of the clearest
pictures of salvation by works we have in the whole Bible. Salvation
is by the promise of God's grace, just like Isaac. He's the price,
the promised child. The salvation is by the promise
of God. Salvation is by God doing all
of the saving and us doing none of it because we can't do any
of it. That's salvation by grace. If you have to do anything to
make God's promise happen, you have to do anything to help God
keep his promise, anything, the slightest thing, that's salvation
by works. If we have to do our part, Sarah
here's thinking we must have to do our part, that's salvation
by works. Sarah may have been the first
one to say, we're responsible. We're responsible to help God
out here. Now, saying man is responsible, that's a true statement. But saying that man is responsible
in this sense, that we're able to do something to make salvation
happen, or we're able to do something to make God's will happen. We're
responsible to do something that we can do. Now, that's a lie. That's salvation by works. Now it's true, we must repent
and we must believe. If I would be saved, I must repent. I must believe. Nobody else can
do it for me. But now don't go making a work out of repentance
and faith now because we can't produce it. We can't make ourselves
repent. We can't make ourselves believe
on Christ. Salvation is a gift of God's
free grace. We can only be saved if God gives
it to us. We can only believe Christ if God gives us faith.
We can only repent if God shows us Christ and causes us to turn
to him. Now it's absolutely true that man is responsible. That's
absolutely true. God is sovereign and man is responsible. Both of those statements are
equally true. But man being responsible simply means this. It doesn't
mean we're able to do something. Man being responsible simply
means God's just and he sends us to hell. Because we did not
do what we were responsible to do. We can't do what we're responsible
to do. So we didn't do it. God's just
in sending us to hell. We did not obey God's law perfectly.
We did not obey the gospel. We did not believe on Christ.
That's what we're responsible to do. We don't do it. God's
just in sending us to hell. Man's responsibility simply means
God's just in sending us to hell. That's all it means. God will
never, ever, in that innumerable host of people, they'll be in
heaven. Not one of them is God going to take there because they
did what they were responsible to do. Not one of them. Every last one
will be there because Christ did what he was responsible to
do. Christ did what those people were responsible to do. All those
people will be there because of what Christ has done for us
and in us, not because we did what we're responsible to do.
I had to say that because that is what Sarah's saying there.
Now, we have to do our part. It just seems obvious to me.
And that's a picture of salvation by works. Sin and Hagar ended
at Abram. There's nothing supernatural
about that. It's just the natural order of life that a young woman
gets pregnant and has a child in it. It's just the natural
order of life. There's nothing supernatural, nothing unusual
about that. But salvation is a supernatural
work. It's not a work of the flesh.
It's a supernatural work. It's a work that only God can
do. It's not a physical work. You
and I can do physical work. By God's grace, he's given us
the ability to move our bodies. We can do physical work. There's
not as much we used to be able to do, can we? But we can still
do something. Salvation's not physical. It's
a spiritual work. It's supernatural. Only God can
do it. You hear Abram, listens to Sarah. He says, well, that
sounds like a good idea. It's just another of the myriad
examples that there's two natures in every believer. Just in the
last chapter, we looked this two weeks ago, chapter 15, Abraham
believed God and God counted it to him for righteousness.
In the very next chapter, the same man who believed God was
counting him for righteousness, enters into the sham of a marriage
with Hagar, even though everybody knew it was wrong, because he
thought, well, Sarah must be right. Maybe we do have to help
God out. Maybe we just, if we help God out a little, you know,
God's will come to pass. That's the same man that just
a chapter ago was believing God and accounting for righteousness.
That sound like anybody else you know? I mean, boy, it does
me. Sounds just like me. The flesh
and the spirit are alive and well in every believer. And since
the flesh is so strong, it's a strong enemy. The flesh cannot
believe God. It's not subject to the law of
God, neither indeed can it be. It cannot believe Christ. It
cannot love Christ. Since that flesh is in all of
us, that's why we've got to be warned about this matter. Salvation
is not by works. And that's what the picture here
is. Hagar and Abram having this child, that's a picture of salvation
by works and salvation by the works of the law can only produce
resentment. Look at verse four. And he went
into Hagar and she conceived. And when she saw that she had
conceived, Her mistress was despised in her eyes. When Hagar discovered
that she was pregnant, she felt superior to her mistress, Sarah. And Sarah probably felt inferior
to Hagar. And nobody likes it. This is not feeling good to Sarah
at all. Hagar was acting like, the other
day I was a slave. Now I'm somebody. I've got Abram's
heir in my womb. Nobody else does. I'm somebody.
She's just strutting around like she's somebody. And Sarah didn't
like that. She treated Hagar horribly. She
took out her bad mood on her slave. See, this picture of salvation
by works, it produces resentment on both sides, doesn't it? You
know, we try to earn our own righteousness by the law. It's
only going to produce resentment. It's going to produce resentment
toward God. Because if we see at all what
the law says, we say, well, that's too hard to keep. There's too
many rules. Even if I keep them outwardly,
if I think about doing something wrong, it's sin. It's too hard.
It makes us resent God. It makes us resent God for being
just and holy. And the law produces resentment
toward God. Not trust in Christ, not faith,
not love for Christ. It produces resentment. And trying
to earn our own righteousness by our works of the law makes
us resent each other. You know, we either resent somebody
else because we look at them and say, Well, they're keeping
the law better than me. Or we feel all self-righteous
and think, well, I'm keeping the law better than somebody
else and I'm better than him and I feel self-righteous towards
him. Either way, it produces resentment. That's all works
religion can produce. So look at verse five. Sarai
said unto Abram, my wrong be upon thee. I've given my maid
into thy bosom. And when she saw that she had
conceived, I was despised in her eyes. The Lord judged between
me and thee. And Abram said unto Sarai, behold
thy maids in thy hand, do to hers as it pleaseth thee. And
Sarai dealt hardly with her. She fled from her face. Now here's
what Sarai is saying. Everybody's throwing everybody
else under the bus here. She's saying, Abraham, this is your
fault. I know it was my idea. But you should have told me,
no, we're not doing that. Abram, you're the head of the
family. I had this idea. It was wrong. Abram, it's your
responsibility to tell me I was wrong and make me not do it.
It's your fault. Sarah resented Abram, too, didn't
she? I mean, you think of that household. I bet you could cut the tension
in that place with a knife all the time. Sarah, she's mad at
everybody. She's mad at Abraham. She's mad
at Hagar. She's mad at everybody. Solomon
said this, Proverbs 21, verse nine. It's better to dwell in
the corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman in a white
house. And Hagar said, Solomon, I know
what you mean. I know that this is no fun. I'm
not putting up with this for one more second. I'm out of here. I'm going back to mama in Egypt.
Now here's where Hagar becomes a beautiful picture of the believer. I never have thought of Hagar
as a picture of a believer before, but there's a beautiful picture
here. Hagar set off running, but she didn't know where to
go. The only thing she knew is, I'm just gonna go back to what's
familiar. I'm gonna go back to the country of my birth. See
in picture what she's doing? She's just running from one form
of bondage to another. She's running from Sarah to Egypt,
which is a picture of bondage. And when the Lord first starts
working on the heart of his sheep, you know the first thing he does?
He makes them miserable. He makes them miserable. He makes
them miserable trusting in their own words. He makes them miserable
in their false religion. He makes them miserable in the
bondage of the law. And so they, like Hagar, decide,
I'm out of here. I'm just gonna start running.
Now they don't know where they're going. They don't know what they're
looking for. They don't know what they need.
They just know I don't like being here, so they start running.
Maybe like Hagar, this is what most people do. They don't like
the kind of bondage they're in, and they just run to a different
denomination. And they have to be there a while until they figure
out, well, that's bondage too. They run off to a different denomination.
They don't know what they're looking for. They just know they're
miserable. They're on the run. They're miserable, but they don't
know who they should be running to. That's Hagar, she's just
running. And if they're the Lord's own,
there's several ways that a believer's just like Hagar. Number one is
this, they're on the run. But the Lord found Hagar. Verse seven. And the angel of
the Lord found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by
the fountain in the way to Shur. Hagar was on the run, She was
going the wrong way, wasn't she? But the Lord did not let that
continue. He went and found her. He found her out there in the
wilderness and he revealed himself to her. Like I said, God, before
he saves his people, he will make it miserable. That sheep's
going to be on the run, but God's sheep will never outrun our good
shepherd. You cannot outrun the long arm
of God's grace. You've heard it said you can't
outrun the long arm of the law. You can't outrun the long arm
of God's grace either. Christ our Savior said he is
the good shepherd. And what did he come to do? To
seek and to save that which was lost. Well here, that's just
what he did, isn't he? He came to seek and he found
one of his lost sheep. He found her out there in the
wilderness. And when the Lord found her, he called her by name. Because that's the way God calls
all of his sheep, by name. When Christ died, he died for
a specific people, the people that the Father gave him. He
died with their names on his heart, on his breastplate, like
the high priest of old had those 12 stones with the names of the
tribes of Israel on it. Christ died for a specific people,
their names on his heart. And he bought those people. He
redeemed those people with his precious blood. He paid their
sin debt and bought the right to have He's not going to lose
one of them. He's going to come and he's going
to find it. He's going to be sure of it by coming to his sheep
and calling them by name, calling them to him. He'll have them.
And this angel of the Lord, this is Christ himself. This is a
pre-incarnate appearance of Christ because look what he says in
verse 10. The angel of the Lord said unto her, I will multiply
thy seed exceedingly. There should not be numbered
for the multitude. I will multiply thy seed. Now the Lord's the
only one who can give life. This is the Lord. This is a pre-incarnate
appearance of Christ, the good shepherd. Come to her and found
her, appeared to her and found her when she was going the wrong
way. Now aren't you thankful? This is the experience of all
God's sheep. Now the Lord's not gonna appear
to us bodily. He's not gonna speak to us audibly like he did
to Hagar here. Actually, you know what? He's
going to do something better. He'll appear to his people through
the preaching of the gospel. And when he appears to you in
the preaching of the gospel, he will be as clear to you as
that the Lord was standing there talking to Hagar. He'll be just
as clear to you by faith as if you were seeing it, actually
more clear than if you're seeing him with your eyes. When the
Lord finds his people, he's going to find them in the wilderness,
in the wilderness. where there's no hope for life
anywhere except in Christ. The Lord doesn't reveal himself
to his people in the big throngs and big hubbub of man's religion. Just like when John the Baptist
came preaching. If you're gonna hear from God,
you're not gonna do it out there in the temple where the scribes
and the Pharisees and all the big show of religion's going
on. You gotta go out to the wilderness. That's where God reveals himself
to his people, where he's got a preacher preaching Christ He's
going to bring them to this wilderness where there's no hope of life
anywhere but in Christ. And then he's going to reveal
himself to him. Then number two, the Lord made Hagar admit who
and what she was. Verse eight, he said, Hagar,
Sarai's maid, whence camest thou? And whither wilt thou go? And
she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai. Now you
notice the Lord didn't call Hagar Abram's wife. Because she wasn't
his wife. It was just a sham marriage.
He called her Sarai's maid. This is not a marriage. This
is not right. This union is wrong and everybody knew it. And God
just brought that out. Let's get this out of the way
first. Let's point this out. This is wrong. And then the Lord
made her admit she's running away from her mistress. And that's
wrong too. I mean, you know, I mean, Slavery's wrong. I'm
not making any comment about slavery. It's what they did in
this time. It's wrong. It's heinous. But you know, she
was, Hagar was Sarah's property. She's stealing from her mistress
when she runs away from her like that. It's wrong. Now before
the Lord saves anybody, he makes them miserable. I don't know
if you can say, well, and then he makes them more miserable.
But I tell you, we've got to admit this before God saves us.
We're sinners who deserve to be sent to hell. We don't deserve
anything but wrath from God. We've got to admit our guilt.
We've got to admit our sin. We've got to admit our hopelessness.
Not just what we've done, but what we are. What we are is sin. That makes us worthless, unable
to do anything to please God. The same thing happened when
the Lord appeared to Jacob. Remember, he wrestled with Jacob
all night long in the morning. He said, you gotta let me go.
And Jacob said, I won't let you go except you bless me. He said, what's your name? Jacob was just hoping that didn't
come up. He had to admit, I'm Jacob. I'm a chief. I'm a supplanter. I'm a conniver. I'm always trying
to get what doesn't belong to me by ill-gotten gains. I've
got to admit who I am. I'm Zen. the glorious blessing of God's
grace. Confessing how sinful we are will never make the Lord
cast us out. Never. Confessing I'm a sinner,
that draws me closer to Christ. Because that shows I'm in need. I need mercy. I need forgiveness. I'm a fit object of God's mercy. Because I can't do anything to
earn anything from God. Confessing who and what I am
makes me an object of God's mercy. That's why in Galatians 4.27,
Paul said, Rejoice thou barren that bearest not. Break forth
and cry thou that travailest not. Well, how can a woman break
out singing and rejoice? She wants a child, but she doesn't
have one. How's that possible? I need life. I need spiritual
life. I don't have any in me. How can I rejoice? Because if
you know you can't do anything to produce life, God will put
it in you. You rejoice. When you finally
admit you can't do anything, that you're totally dependent
on God, that's when he'll put life in you. That's when he'll
make you an object of his mercy. He made Hagar admit who she was,
and then he's merciful to her. Here's the third thing. The Lord
made Hagar submit. He told her in verse nine, the
angel of the Lord said unto her, return to thy mistress and submit
thyself unto her hands. Now that sounds hard, doesn't
it? I mean, that sounds hard. Send her back to Sarah knowing
how bad she's gonna treat her? She's probably gonna treat her
worse now. I mean, it's one of the reasons, you know, that I
feel sorry for Hagar. Like I said, this story happened
to a real person. He told her, now you go back. You submit yourself
unto her rules. Now, we all know the end of the
story. Hagar is going to leave Abraham's house eventually, isn't
she? He's going to leave when God tells Abraham, thrust her
out. Thrust her out as a picture of thrusting out any hope, any
trust in your works so that you trust Christ and Christ alone.
Your trust in your works has got to be thrust out before you
can trust Christ. And as hard as that had to be,
this is a glorious picture of salvation that's so clear. If
God's going to save us, brother, we're going to submit. We're
going to submit. We're going to submit to the
kingship of God. Submitting to his kingship means
this. We got this idea today. Everybody deserves a chance.
It just drives me insane. We've got to submit ourselves
to the kingship of Christ. You want what you deserve from
God? No, you don't. We have to admit I'm in his hands
to do with as he pleases. If he damns me, he's going to
be just to him. And if he shows mercy, he's going to be just
to doing that too, because he's going to punish his son for my
sin. We've got to submit. And I'm telling you, that's impossible
for the flesh. You think it was hard for Hagar
to go back to Sarah? Man, that had to be hard. Well,
it was hard, but it's impossible for the flesh to submit ourselves
to the kingship of Christ. And the Lord's got to give his
people a new nature, a heart and nature of submission so that
we submit ourselves. We submit ourselves to the kingship
of Christ and we submit ourselves to the righteousness of Christ.
You know, the Apostle Paul said the reason his countrymen were
not saved is they refused to submit themselves to the righteousness
of Christ. They insisted, I'm gonna trust
in my own works, I'm gonna trust in my own religious activity,
I'm gonna trust in all these ceremonies. I will not submit
myself to the righteousness of Christ. If they would, Paul said,
God save them. Well, what is it to submit yourself
to the righteousness of Christ? It's very simple. Quit trusting
in your works. Quit trusting in what you do.
And trust Christ alone. He is your only righteousness.
You don't add anything to it. You don't help him out. That's
submitting yourself to the righteousness of Christ. And if God's gonna
save us, he's gonna make us submit. He's gonna make us surrender
ourselves to Christ. All right, now here's the fourth
thing. Now the Lord gives Hagar a promise of grace. In verse
10, the angel of the Lord said unto her, I'll multiply thy seed
exceedingly that it should not be numbered for the multitude.
Now, Lord promised Hagar that she would have descendants that
would be innumerable. And that was a very, very special
promise at that time for, for a woman to be barren was, was
considered to be a curse from God at that time. And what a,
what a thing just made them so happy to have all these, you
know, the descendants, but her descendants, Ishmael, His descendants
are going to be the Arabs of the world today. And the Lord
tells her, he's honest with her. Verse 11, the angel of the Lord
said unto her, behold, thou art with child and I shall bear a
son and shall call his name Ishmael because the Lord hath heard thy
affliction and he'll be a wild name. His hand will be against
every man and every man's hand against him. And he should dwell
in the presence of all his brethren. Now that describes the Arab nation
to T right up to today. And that doesn't require a lot
of comment, but let me say this. Here's what I do know about this.
The Lord overrode Abraham and Sarah and Hagar's sin. They did
wrong and the Lord overrode it to give us this glorious picture
of salvation in Christ. That salvation is not by works.
It's in the covenant of grace. It's in God's doing. It's in
God's promise and God fulfilling his promise. The Lord overrode
their sin to bring good out of it, to give us this picture so
that we might be taught salvation is not by our works. It's found
in the covenant of God's grace. God forgives the sin of his people.
We do wrong, God overrides it and brings good out of it. But
now don't be deceived. There's ramifications for our
sins. I hate it when I hear people say, well, you know, God's sovereign.
So whatever I do, you know, it's okay that whatever I mean, awful
thing I do, you know, it was God's will that I do it. Tell you what, be mighty careful.
Yes. God's sovereign. And if you're
one of his own, he's forgiven your sin, but there's going to
be ramifications for what we do. I mean, there's just, there's
a, there's results, you know, that we're going to have to bear
the responsibility for. I tell you, the ramifications
of this particular sin have been felt in the earth for 5,000 years.
And it's not going to quit until Christ returns. So just, yeah,
God's sovereign, but you be mighty careful. Now there's ramifications
for what we do. But here's the picture, what
God's telling her. Salvation is by promise. It's
by God's grace. It's not by man's doing, it's
God's doing. Salvation is found in what he
tells her here, I will. Salvation is God saying, I will. I will multiply your seed. I
will choose a people to redeem. I will come and redeem those
people. I'll pay the price. I will call those people to myself.
I'll give those people life. I'll keep them safe in the palm
of my hand. I'll preserve those people, and
I will glorify those people. Salvation is all found in that
statement. God's saying, I will. I will. And he has, hasn't he? He has. And that's what makes salvation.
Sure, God's saying, I will. He doesn't need you and me to
help out. He will. He will. Now here's the last
thing. This is what I wanted to come
to all along. The Lord saw Hagar, verse 13. She called the name of the Lord
that spake unto her, thou God, seest me. For she said, have
I also here looked after him that seeth me? Now here's the
thing that thrilled Hagar's heart in this encounter. I'm sure it
encouraged her as she went back to Sarah. Her heart was thrilled. She realized this. The Lord saw
me. Here I was out here in the wilderness
trying to run and hide, and the Lord saw me. Now friends, it's
well with our souls if the Lord sees us. All we need is for the
Lord to see us. We don't need to explain everything
about our situation. We don't need to explain what
we need or why we're in trouble or what the trouble is. All we
need is for the Lord to see us. If he does, all is well. He'll take care of everything. And it's comforting to know this.
The Lord sees all of his people all of the time. Never one time
are they out of his eye. The Lord saw his people falling
in at him. Before he created anything, he
saw his people falling in at him. That's why he put us in
Christ before he created anything. The Lord saw his people running
from the law. He saw them unable to keep it.
That's why he sent Christ our righteousness. to do for us what
we couldn't do for ourselves, keep the law for us. The Lord
saw his people, they're lost in the wilderness. They're going
the wrong way and they'll never go the right way on their own.
That's why he sent Christ the Good Shepherd, to seek and to
save all of his people. The Lord saw his people with
the sin debt that they could not pay. And that's why he sent
Christ the Redeemer to pay the sin debt of his people with his
own precious blood. He took their debt and he paid
it for them. The Lord sees his people in our
ignorance, that's why he sent Christ our wisdom. The Lord saw
his people in our unholiness, that's why he sent Christ our
sanctification. The Lord sees his people in our
darkness, that's why he sent Christ the light of the world.
Do you see what I'm talking about? Do you see Christ? Do you see
how God saves His people? Do you see that? You have light.
How do you have it? God saw you in your darkness
and He sent Christ's light to you. That's how you see it. God
sees His people hurting and sorrowing. And we see no way out. That's
why He sent Christ the Comforter. to bring grace sufficient. The
Lord sees his people, and you know how he sees them, you know
where he sees them? He sees them in Christ. And when God sees
his people in Christ, he sees them exactly as he sees Christ. Matter of fact, all he sees is
Christ. He sees us as righteous, as holy,
as loved, as accepted, accepted in the beloved. Now I know we
think, God sees me righteous. He sees me holy. I don't see
myself that way. Well, here's some good news for
you. The way God sees us is the way we really are. It's the way
he made us in his son. And that's all a child of God
wants. God see me, see me in all of my need. He'll provide. And my heart's desire is that
God would see me in Christ. All is well. Nothing can ever
be wrong if God sees me in Christ. Hagar was thrilled. I can't quit
without saying this. She said, I'm so thrilled the
Lord sees me. Then she says, do I see him?
Do I see Him? Do I believe Him? God sees me.
Do I believe Him? The gospel's been preached. Christ
has been presented. Do I see Him? Do I believe Him? I tell you what, we'll be blessed
if God makes it so, won't we? We'll be blessed. When you lay
down tonight, I don't know, you may not be like me. Sandy, I'm
jealous people lay down and go to sleep. I'm jealous. My dad
could do it. He said, I can't do it because
I got a guilty conscience. I'm jealous. I mean, I don't know.
But if you're like me, you're going to lay there for a while.
Ponder that for a little bit. Here I am laying here in the
dark. Thou, God, seest me. Oh, I mean, we had a canceled
service last Wednesday. I was so disappointed. I just
wanted to preach this message. I've been bursting in this for
seven days now. Thou, God, seest me. Oh, if we
just get a hold of that, just think and think and think and
think on that, it'll bless you. All right, let's bow again. Our
Father, how we thank you for your word. How we thank you that
you've not left us to our own devices, but you've given us
clear instruction in your word that this is an allegory. A picture
of salvation is by your promise, by your covenant of grace. And
Father, how we thank you for your grace. How we thank you
that you purposed to save your people, not because we've done
anything to deserve it, but because Christ your son deserved it.
That he would come and take on our nature, that he would take
the sin of his people, that he would put it away by the sacrifice
of himself, wash us in his blood. Oh, Father, how we thank you.
How we thank you that you don't need us to do anything to help
you fulfill your purpose. but that your purpose of salvation
by grace for your people is sure and certain, that you'll send
the gospel to your people, that you'll find them, you'll find
us in the wilderness and reveal Christ to us. Father, how we
thank you. Father, I beg of you that you
take the gospel as it's been preached tonight, cause it to
take root in the hearts of your people for your glory, that we
might see the glory of Christ our Savior in awe, in wonder,
at what he would do for the likes of us, and cause us to rest and
trust him, to rest completely and trust him, and cause us to
fall asleep tonight with this joyous thought, thou God, see
as me. It's in the precious name of
Christ our Savior. For his sake we pray, amen. All
right, Sean.