We have been studying here for
the last few weeks concerning Jonah. And I want this evening for us
to look at chapter 3 and look at it from this sense that Jonah
now becomes a preacher. We looked at him as he was the
disobedient prophet. He brought all the trouble upon
the sailors. He brought the judgment of God
upon them. God had cast him down in the belly of this whale for
three days and three nights. And now the whale vomits him
out upon dry land, and now Jonah becomes a preacher. He takes
on himself now to represent to you and I, the preacher. preaching
to the men of Nineveh. And here's what the Lord Jesus
said of Jonah. The men of Nineveh shall rise
up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn
it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah's, and behold,
a greater than Jonah is here. Now I want to turn over in chapter
3 of Jonah to my text and read these ten verses concerning Jonah's
preaching and their repentance. That's our study this morning.
Beginning in chapter 3 of Jonah in verse 1. The word of the Lord
came unto Jonah again the second time. The whale had vomited out
Jonah upon dry land. The word of the Lord came to
him a second time and said, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city,
and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose
and went unto Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now
Nineveh was an exceeded great city of three days' journey. And Jonah began to enter into
the city a day's journey, and he cried and said, Yet forty
days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed
God, and they proclaimed a fast, and they put on sackcloth from
the greatest of them even unto the least of them. For word came
unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, he
laid aside from him his robe, and covered himself with sackcloth,
and he sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed
and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and
his nobles, saying, Let every man, let neither man nor beast,
herd nor flock, taste anything, let them not feed nor drink water. But let every man and beast be
covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God. Yea, let them
turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that
is in his hands. Who can tell if God will turn
and repent, and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish
not? And God saw their works, that
they turned from their evil way, and God repented of the evil
that He had said that He would do unto them, and He did it not."
What an impossible task. for any human being or group
of human beings to be assigned to convert a city of this size. Here, these people of Nineveh,
and the Lord himself here calls it in verse 2, a great city. Nineveh had existed for quite
a few years. It had began by giving itself
over to its lust, And after years of lust, their lust had bred
violence. And now the scripture says the
city was a violent place to live. All that you saw in the city
was open and profane sins and violence. Nineveh was an arrogant
place, a proud group of people. A city who was at ease. And you
can imagine, brothers and sisters, what a city this was. That God
himself called it a great city. And history tells us what a structure
this place was. The area that went around this
city was 60 miles. And around this city was a humongous
wall. They tell us that the wall was
so wide that you could ride three chariots abreast on this wall. It was like driving down one
of our state highways. And the wall was tremendously
built. They tell us the wall from before
it went into the ground to the top was a hundred feet high. Can you imagine a wall that went
around 60 miles of city that was so high that it stretched
up 100 feet in the air? And every few feet there was
a tower that went into the ground and rose 200 feet up in the air. 100 feet above the walls itself. And Matthew Henry tells us that
the account has it that this wall had contained 1,500 of these
towers. This was a humongous city, a
great city that the Lord said. And can you imagine being sent
to convert a city that was full of arrogant people, sinful people,
and violent people? If you and I, in our society,
were sent to convert a city of this size, how would we go about
it? Can you imagine our education
system being sent to convert these people? How would we do
it? Well, they said this is an ignorant
people. They can't read. They can't write.
They don't know anything about math. The way we'll do it is
we'll educate them in the arts and in the sciences. We need
to educate these people. Then you have your socialism.
And they say the problem is people's in poverty. The problem is people
need a house to live in. People need a job. People need
health care. That's the way we'll change this
city. And then, of course, you have your legislators, and they
come along and say, we'll legislate sin out of our society. We'll
build greater prisons. We'll get more police officers
on our street. And then, of course, you've got
those religious people, even the church. If the Lord came
to you and I this morning and sent us to such a city, how in
the world would you and I convert the city and turn it from its
evil ways? Well, the first thing we'd have
to do is get a committee together. Because we've got to have a hundred
or so missionaries. And then we've got to have worship
buildings set up. And then we've got to print up
our tracts. And we've got to send out information
where we're going to meet at. And then I would imagine, brothers
and sisters, that when flesh put its hand to try to turn such
a great city from its wicked ways, it would at last fail indeed. How would we convert such a city?
But when God goes to do it, how does He do it? When God goes
to turn these men from their wicked ways and to save them
from their sins, how does He do it? He takes the one man. and puts him because of his disobedience
in the belly of the whale. He humbles his soul. He chastens
him. He raises him up from the belly
of hell. He sends him with a seaweed wrapped
around his neck for 800 miles into this city. And he sends
him there with this message. And he goes down through the
streets and all he has to say is this, in 40 days and none
of us are going to be overthrown. The crowds begin to sway. The
windows begin to go up. Word comes to the king. He takes
off his robe. He sets in sackcloth. He sends
out the word that men are to turn from their evil ways and
cry mightily unto God. And therefore God is glorified,
and the city is saved, and mercy is magnified, and grace, free
grace, is honored. By one man, God's man, and by
one message, He converts this entire city. Oh, the wisdom of
God! How unsearchable are His judgments
and His ways! One man, one message. You see,
brothers and sisters, why here we don't seek to entertain people?
We don't have our saints here. We don't have our soldiers here.
We have built what we have on this one thing, and that's teaching
and the preaching of God's Word. Because we know this, if God's
going to save people, if God's going to send us a revival, it's
going to be through the preaching of His blessed Word. By the foolishness
of preaching, God is pleased to save those that love Him. And that's the way He saved this
whole city. One man, one message. Yet forty days, and none of us
shall be overthrown. And first of all this morning,
let's take just a minute and look at this message itself. It was only eight words, and
it was a stern message. Forty days, and none of us shall
be overthrown. Now I'm not for sure if that
was just the title of his message, and then he elaborated on it,
or if that was the body of the message, if that was the whole
of his message, and I'm inclined to believe, with most others,
that this is all he had to say. God said you've got these eight
words to preach and that's all he preached. Forty days and none
of us shall be overthrown. What a stern message from a stern
prophet. There was no tears in his eyes
when he preached it. His heart was not throbbing.
He did not desire their salvation. He was as stern as the message
itself. Forty days, and Nineveh shall
be overthrown. But oh, how this message awakened
these men of Nineveh. How it awakened in their hearts. And let me show us three things
this morning, brothers and sisters, that had awakened their thoughts
too. They come to realize suddenly,
through hearing of this message, these three things. And it's
told us here in our text. And the first thing they realized
was this. They were awakened to their sin
before God. They had lived in sin They had
served their lust, violence was in their hands, and they didn't
even fully realize it. But when this message come, oh,
their conscience was awakened to their evil ways. Did you notice that? Did you
notice how the king defined his city and the inhabitants? He
said that every man put away from himself his evil ways. Turn from your evil ways. Now, if you ever thought of a
word that really gets under people's skins, if you want to really
offend somebody, you might call them a sinner and they'll say,
I agree with that. You may say, you're so wrong
in what you are and what you do, and they'll say, I agree
with that. You may even call somebody ungodly, and they'll
say, I agree with that, I'm ungodly. But I tell you there's a word
that if you ever use to identify anybody and what they're doing
and want to get under their skin, use this word. We don't even
have to define it. We may not even know exactly
what it means. But I tell you, when we share
it, we don't like it. And you know what it is? Evil.
Evil. Your ways are evil. You are evil. And boy, when we
hear that to identify ourselves, there's something about that
that gets under my skin. I may be a sinner, but I'm not
evil. I may do a lot of bad things,
but I'm not evil. But you know the things that
this city was confronted with? And this king told them, let
every one of you turn from his evil ways. You know what the
Scripture says about this word evil. It's used to describe fallen
devils. When you and I think of the angels
that sinned, and God angrily cast them down in darkness, and
He's got them reserved there. And we think of all the sin that
they commit, how they go about causing all the havoc in our
society. But you know that's the same
word that's used to describe them. The Lord Jesus came casting
out the evil spirits. Fallen angels, black angels,
are addressed and identified the same way this king identified
these people were evil, evil. Oh, what a miracle that through
Jonah's preaching, these people were brought to acknowledge that
they were evil people. Ain't that a miracle in itself?
Oh, you know, you and I are brothers and sisters and we know it. We're
living in a day in our generation where men think so highly of
themselves. All of us think too highly of
ourselves. Self-esteem has run amok. We have all the hatred,
we have all the divisions, everybody from the preachers, husbands
and wives and parents and children, nations are fighting against
nations, and you know what our whole problem is? We're evil! We're evil! And we don't even know it. We
don't even know it. Oh, may God the Holy Spirit come
in our time, and make us face this, and humble us to the truth
of this, that we are indeed evil. Listen to what the Scripture
says about this. Jonah's called a weeping prophet
because he wept over man's condition. And here's what he often said.
They walk in the counsel and the imaginations of their evil,
hearts. And that's where the whole problem
starts at. The evil heart. And then the scripture talks
about this, what comes out of that heart. And that's evil thoughts,
evil imaginations, evil unbelief, lust, jealousy, foolishness,
and hate. Why do we think like we think?
Because we are what we are. And listen to this, Jane talks
about her tongue. Here's the heart, the thoughts,
the tongue. Here's what he said about the
tongue. He says, it's full of deadly poison. The tongue is
an unruly evil. He can't even control it, can
he? Every time we open our mouth, we have to put a guard up on
our tongue. Because we're going to make ourselves look good.
We're going to make somebody else look bad. We're going to
bring false accusations against somebody. We're going to separate
chief friends. We're going to cause a war. Our
tongues are an unruly evil. The Lord Jesus tells us about
the evil eye. And here's what he says about
it. The eye is never full of sin. It envies, but it's never
full of envy. It lusts, but it's never full
of lusting. It desires, but it's never filled
with what it obtains. The eye is evil. The deeds are
evil. The world cannot hate you, but
me it hated because I testified it that the deeds thereof are
evil. And the Lord Jesus Christ gave
himself for us to deliver us from this present evil world. You say, Bruce, I'll never believe
that about myself. You're not going to convince
me that my heart and all my being is evil. Now that's the miracle
about this message. This message came to this group
of people. And suddenly they were awakened
to this fact that before God we are evil. We are evil. Ain't that a miracle? Ain't that
a miracle? Brothers and sisters, listen
to me this morning. It's not up to debate. You and
I aren't going around debating where men are evil and sinful
or not. The question is, is a man going
to see himself as evil and acknowledge it to God and turn from it? Or is he going on deceiving his
own self and perish in his sin? That's the question. Two things,
therefore, this message brought them to realize. One was their
evil ways. And number two, God is angry
over them. God is angry over them. Did you see that? The king
sat there upon his ashes and he said, let everyone, every
one of us, see none of us are excused of it. Let everyone turn
from evil ways. Who can tell if God will turn
and repent and turn away from his fierce anger? I don't know where this generation
has come up with this whole concept and idea that since the cross,
God is not angry with sin anymore. Since the cross, God has been
reconciled to sin. I have one fellow to say, since
Jesus Christ died, I can just live in sin now. It don't matter
anymore. Where did we come up with the
whole concept of this? Well, these men were awakened
to realize that's not so. They were awakened to realize
we sinned against God. We're evil people from our hearts,
to our tongues, to our eyes, to our ears. And God is angry
with us. God is angry with us. But it
just wasn't that they knew here that they were ready to perish.
It just wasn't the punishment. But their thought was towards
Him who was going to punish. Three times here they made mention
of God's name. The people of Nineveh believed
God. God's angry with us. We've seen
it against Him. They believe God. And these,
it says there in verse 8, cry mightily to God that He spare
us, that God would turn from His fierce anger. Brothers and
sisters, listen to me this morning carefully. All of us, listen
to me this morning. If God is our Creator, if God
is your Creator, And He's the one that's given you breath and
life and being. And He's your judge. Then you owe your allegiance
to Him. You owe perfect obedience, perfect
love to Him. To serve Him and to honor Him
and to enjoy Him forever. And if you don't, if you don't,
then you will stand before Him and give no account of why you
did not. If He's not your Creator, if He's not your Sustainer, if
He's not your Judge, then go on and do what's right in your
own eyes. But if He is everything, if He is everything, then you
owe it to Him to humbly and lovingly serve Him, obey Him, and love
Him, and enjoy Him forever. That's what these people saw.
That's what they saw. They're not walking in God's
ways, they said. We walk in our own ways. And now God's angry
with us. Secondly, here's the second thing
they realized was this. Not only here they stand before
God in their evil and their guilt. But notice what else they saw
in this, and that was the shortness of the time that they had left.
Forty days? God has found us out. We're evil,
and we've only got forty days left in this world. I can't imagine the fear that
must have gripped their hearts, how they were shocked to hear
that. I know a man called me and said, He said, they just
told me I've got cancer. Got about a year and a half to
live. And I went and sat down with him, and he sat there and
stared at the wall. In shock. In shock. Forty days and you're going to
leave this world. Forty days and everything that
you know right now is going to change. You're going to leave
your house. You're going to lose your family.
You're going to lose your health. You're going to lose your job.
You're going to lose your comfort, your ease. Everything that you
know in this world, your world is going to end and you're going
out into another world in just forty days. Forty days. I look at you this morning, dear
soul, and you and I aren't for sure that we've got 40 hours.
You say, Bruce, are you going to turn into a prophet? No, I'm
not a prophet. God's not revealed anything to
me. That's for sure. But I know this, brothers and
sisters. There have been people who died without one second of
warning. There have been people who died
with their food in their mouth. Who died with a cheerful word
upon their lips. We know this much, God told them
40 days and you'll be overthrown. And the same God has appointed
the very hour and the minute that you and I must die. We know
that only. And you know why we're so at
ease? God helped us. We don't believe
God do it. We don't believe God. But oh,
let the message come to us. Let the message come to our generation,
our communities, our loved ones, as it did to them. And then they'll
be gripped with a fear. This is what they felt. Forty
days, and we're going out to give a camp. Forty days, and
we're going out into eternity. Just forty days. Forty days. Someone said our country has
become the land of sudden death. Sudden death. Heart attacks? Gone. Accident out on the road? Gone. Violence? Gone. Sudden death. Forty days. Forty days. And look at the nature of the
description. Look at this. Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall
be overthrown. Boy, that's vague ain't it? That's
vague. How is he going to overthrow
Nineveh? Is he going to send an earthquake? He doesn't say.
Is he going to send some invading army or a plague? He doesn't
say, does he? He's so vague. And you know something,
that's what makes this so fearful. If he told them how he was going
to do it, they could maybe try to prepare. But he didn't tell
them. Ain't that one thing, brothers and sisters, that makes being
lost so dreadful? You have this thought, you have
this idea within, yes, God's going to deal with me. I just
don't know when exactly. I don't know how exactly He's
going to do it. I don't know exactly how it's going to be.
And that vagueness just adds to the fear, doesn't it? How
am I going to die? I know I'm going to die. Is it
going to be easy? Is it going to be painful? Is
it going to be sudden? How's it going to be? And what
about after death? You know the scriptures are so
vague as to the judgment and eternity. Really, it's just in
general. It gives us these general thoughts
of what's going to happen. These shall go away into outer
darkness. What is that? What is outer darkness? I have no idea. And yet at the
same time they shall be cast into a lake of fire. How do you
have fire and outer darkness? And what is that worm that never
dies? What is it to be cast into a
bottomless pit? What does it mean to perish?
Oh, I thank God that he didn't go into detail about these things.
What if he wrote us a book to explain the whole details of
how each man was going to die, and what each man was going to
suffer in eternity? Our eyes couldn't read such a
book. Our ears couldn't hear such a tarment in tales. He just
sends us this message like he does to John. You're going to
be overthrown. Your guilt has already been proved,
and I'm going to deal with you. And oh, not knowing all the details
makes us afraid. It makes us afraid. The Bible comes to us as it did
to Jonah. And it makes us afraid. Something
else. Look at this. This is so important. Get this point. The men of Nineveh
repented. Now this is amazing. They repented. The whole city repented. Even
though they had such scant hope of any mercy being given to them.
What hope did they have that mercy would be given to them?
This is all they had. Who can tell? Who can tell? Ain't that amazing? Here comes
the King of Nineveh, he gets off of his throne, and he sends
a message out to his people, and he says, repent and turn
to God, cry mightily unto God, for who can tell if God will
be merciful? But King Jonah said nothing about
mercy. Who can tell? Who can tell? There was no mercy in his message.
Yes, but the king said, he didn't say there may not be mercy. He didn't say yet 40 days and
none of us shall be overthrown and there shall no mercy be granted.
He didn't say that. So perhaps there may be mercy.
Who can tell? Therefore, let's repent. And
the king might have said, well, he'd give us 40 days. If God
was going to kill us, why don't he just kill us now, like he
did Sodom and Gomorrah? Yet he said 40 days. Is this
not an opportunity for us to repent and cry matterly to God?
All they had was spook and tale. Somebody asked the question,
do you think they went to Jonah and asked him if maybe God would
be merciful? You know they might have. They
might have done that, but you know they didn't get any help
from this prophet. He hated these people. And you see old Jonah
up there on the side of the mountain, build his little shack to see
if God was going to destroy this city. And there they go up the
hill to see if Jonah would help them to know if God was going
to be merciful. And Jonah sees them coming up the hill. And
his eyes get wide. And he shakes his finger at them.
And his voice is raised. Forty days, he said. Forty days
and none of us shall be overthrown. Oh, they gird up the skirts of
their loins and they go trembling back into town. Jonah won't even
talk to them. All they had that they might
obtain mercy was this scant hold of who can tell, who can tell. But that was enough. That was
enough. Maybe the king said, well, we're
not going to be any losers. If God don't show us mercy, then
let us seek Him for mercy. We won't be losers if He don't
show us mercy. We can but perish if we go. We are resolved to
try. For if we stay away, we know
we shall forever die. That's all they had. Who can
tell? Those lepers that stood outside the gates in the city
of Samaria, the Syrians, their enemy had encamped them around,
were starving them to death. And the lepers sitting there
in the gates, and one of them said, let's go into the city.
They said, there's a famine in there. If we go in there, we're
going to die. And they said, if we sit here, we're going to
die. Let's go out and give ourselves up to the Syrians. If they kill
us, we're going to die anyway. That's all these people have.
Let's go to the Lord and see if He'll be merciful to us. All
He can do is reject us. But my dear lost friends here
this morning, you've got much more than that to hope for mercy.
You've got the promises of Jesus Christ that tells you God is
merciful. Listen to the Savior's own words.
If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink. If a man is
thirsty for mercy and forgiveness, he said, come to me and drink.
He says, all that comes to me, I will in no wise cast him out. He says this from his own words,
coming to me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I promise
you, I'll give you rest. You're told this morning about
the blood of sprinkling that washes your conscience. You're
told this morning that God delights in mercy. You don't have to doubt
that. You're told this morning that
all manner of sins will be forgiven then, even blasphemy. You're
told of a mediator between you and God that will plead your
cause. You are told of the blessed Holy
Spirit himself, who says, Come, come, come now and let us reason
together. Though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be white as snow. Let the wicked forsake his way,
and let the unrighteous man forsake his thought, and let him return
unto the Lord. He will be merciful unto him,
and to our God he will abundantly pardon. What are you going to do, dear
soul, if these men of Nineveh repent? And all they had to encourage
them to repent was who can tell. What are you going to do? What
will you do if you do not repent? What are you going to do if you
do not seek the Lord yourself? The men of Nineveh are going
to rise up and judge you. You had all these promises preached
to you. Will you not turn from your evil
ways and seek the Lord? And you've got a preacher this
morning that loves you. You've got a church that loves you.
And if you don't repent and cry out to God as these people did,
we'll weep in secret places for you. Oh, you've got a great advantage
over the men of Nineveh. What will you do? What will you
do? Oh, what a happy conclusion this
city faced. Their destiny seemed doomed.
It was so sure. Forty days. Forty days. It seemed
so certain, didn't it? Forty days, and God's going to
overthrow your city. Oh, how certain that seemed.
It almost drove them to despair. They couldn't sleep of the night.
You know they couldn't sleep. Their hearts were so heavy. They
were so anxious. Just a few more days. Then it
got down to a few more hours. And then just a few more minutes.
And God's going to overthrow us. And they turned and they cried
mightily to the Lord. And they said, O God, be merciful
to us, a sinner. Be merciful to me, a sinner.
And they went from having such a scant hold of who can tell, to saved from destruction. Can you imagine how this city
fell on the fortieth day? The fortieth day came And how
they trembled for fear and hope. And when the hoarded bay had
gone, all that was singing in the streets, they were rejoicing. God has spared us. We've obtained
mercy. Wouldn't that be wonderful for
you this morning, dear soul? You've come here this morning,
some of you. Some of you. Bless your heart, I know some
of you. You know what you've been going through for years. You've gone
through the very same thing this preacher went through for years.
You prayed yourself to sleep many nights, haven't you? You
fear death, don't you? It's a torment to your conscience.
You know you can't withstand God. He's too mighty. You know
you've got to face Him. You're tormented over Him. You
just don't have any hope at all. You live in fear, don't you?
In torment. I know right where you're at. Wouldn't it be something
this morning to leave this place having a good hope? Going from
saying God's going to destroy me anytime to saying, oh, I have
a good hope of life eternal. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Then seek Him for it. If these
men said, who can tell? You can tell, you know. Take
Him at His word and go to Him and believe Him. And all you'll go from knowing
that you're rejected to knowing that you're accepted in Christ.
Going from being dead in trespasses and sins to having life eternal. Going from seeing the frown of
God and feeling His anger in your country to go into seeing
God's smiling face. Wouldn't that be wonderful? That's
what these people felt. Here comes the message. Forty
days and you're going to be overthrown. Oh, we're sinners against God. God's angry with us. He's going
to destroy us. God be merciful to us. Mercy. Mercy. There comes a time, dear soul,
in these people's lives, and there's going to come a time
in your life if it hasn't already come, It's going to come down
to these two things. And some of you may be facing
that view this morning. God's going to either destroy
you, or He's going to show you mercy. That's what it's going
to come down to. He's going to save you by His
mercy. He's going to turn you from your
sins. He's going to convert you from it, or He's going to destroy
you. Some of you right here this morning
may be at that point, that's the only options left. Ain't
no other option. No, their time's run out. It's 40 days and I'm
either going to save them, I'm either going to forgive them,
or I'm going to destroy them. See, so you don't have any options.
Ain't no other option. Mercy. Mercy. Oh God be merciful. Depths of mercy. Can there be
mercy still reserved for me? Can my God His wrathful bearer
and me the chief of sinners bear? Can He? Go to Him and find out. Confront Him with it. And my
last point is this. My last point is this. Our last
verse in this chapter. God saw their works. That they
turned from their evil ways, and God repented of the evil
that He said He would do, and did it not. When God looks upon you this
morning, dear soul, what do you want Him to see? He looks upon
every one of us. Our very hearts are naked and
open in His sight. When you leave here this morning,
every last one of us, God's looking at our hearts. He knows us. What
do you want Him to see? When He looks upon you, what
do you want Him to see? You want Him to see that smirk
on the face of your heart. You want Him to see that heart
that purposed on continuing in its rebellion and unbelief. You want Him to hear you say
in your heart this morning, I'm not going to think about that
today. I heard what the preacher had to say. I'm not interested.
Maybe later I'll think about that. You want Him to look at
you and see that? Or do you want Him to look on
your heart and say and see this? There's a heart that's finished
with sin. There's a heart that's acknowledged
to me this morning. Lord, I'm a sinner. I'm an evil
person. You want Him to look upon your heart and see a heart
that's in need of mercy? You want Him to look upon your
heart and hear you say, Lord, I cannot live any longer without
You. Either save me today or I perish. I refuse to live any longer without
You. Be my Savior or I'm lost. Be
my Father or I'm an orphan. I'm Yours, Lord, save me. I'm
Thine, Lord, save me. Is that what you want Him to
see? He's going to judge you according to your words. Now
He's going to do it. He's going to give to every man
according to His words. And He's going to look upon you.
And if you say, I'm a sinner in need of mercy, He's going
to reward you. If you say, I'm a rebel and I'm going to die
a rebel, He'll reward you. He'll reward you. What do you
want Him to say to your soul? What do you want Him to say?
May God bring us to repentance. May God bring us at His feet,
forsaking our evil ways, our evil pleasures, our sinful self,
and casting our souls upon Jesus Christ to be saved by Him. Our Father in Heaven, how You
blessed Your Word. How You blessed preaching of
Your Word to many hearts. Lord, what great failures we
are, how weak we are. But we thank you that it's not
in our strength or our ability, but it's in the power of your
Holy Spirit. Not by power or might, but by my Spirit, saith
the Lord. Make your word effectual today.
Thank you for mercy. You showed us we were lost. You
showed us we were perishing. And then you showed us your smiling
face. You forgave us. You received us for the sake
of your dear son. And we raise our voices in praise
and thanksgiving that you've given us a good hope through
grace. In Christ our Lord's name, amen. Amazing grace, how sweet the
sound, that saved a wretch like me