As you're taking your seats, would you turn with me to the book of 2 Samuel, chapter 5. You can find this on Pew Bible, page 257, as we consider the moment we've all been waiting for. If you recall from several weeks ago, we read the previous two chapters and considered all of the politics all of the deadliness and strife that was going on during an Israelite civil war as David was seeking to ascend to the throne of Israel, his promised right by God. We read of treachery, we read of politics, we read of scheming, and tonight we get to what I feel like we've been waiting for since 1 Samuel 1, now in 2 Samuel chapter 5. So if you would turn your attention with me to God's Word, this is 2 Samuel chapter 5 beginning in verse 1. Then all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and said, Behold, we are your bone and flesh. In times past, when Saul was king over us, it was you who led out and brought in Israel. And the Lord said to you, You shall be shepherd of my people Israel, and you shall be prince over Israel. So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel. David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. At Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months, and at Jerusalem he reigned over all Israel and Judah thirty-three years. and the king and his men went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, who said to David, you will not come in here, but the blind and the lame will ward you off, thinking David cannot come in here. Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion, that is, the city of David. And David said on that day, whoever would strike the Jebusites, let him get up the water shaft to attack the lame and the blind, who are hated by David's soul. Therefore it is said, the blind and the lame shall not come into the house. And David lived in the stronghold and called it the city of David. And David built the city all around the millow inward, And David became greater and greater for the Lord, the God of hosts, was with him. And Hiram, king of Tyre, sent messengers to David, and cedar trees, also carpenters and masons, who built David a house. And David knew that the Lord had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for the sake of his people Israel. And David took more concubines and wives from Jerusalem, after he came from Hebron, and more sons and daughters were born to David. And these are the names of those who were born to him in Jerusalem. Shamuah, Shobab, Nathan, Solomon, Ebar, Eleshua, Nepheg, Japhia, Elishema, Elida, and Elipheth. When the Philistines heard that David had been anointed king over Israel, all the Philistines went up to search for David, but David heard of it and went down to the stronghold. Now the Philistines had come and spread out in the valley of Rephaim, and David inquired of the Lord, shall I go up against the Philistines? Will you give them into my hand? And the Lord said to David, go up, for I will certainly give the Philistines into your hand. And David came to Baal-perazim, and David defeated them there, and he said, the Lord has broken through my enemies before me like a breaking flood. Therefore, the name of that place is called And the Philistines left their idols there, and David and his men carried them away. And the Philistines came up yet again and spread out in the valley of Rephaim. And when David inquired of the Lord, he said, Go around to the rear and come against them opposite the balsam trees. And when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees, then rouse yourself, for the Lord has gone out before you to strike down the army of the Philistines. And David did as the Lord commanded him and struck down the Philistines from Geba to Gezer. Thus ends the reading of God's word. May he bless us and nourish us by it this evening. Let us turn to him once more in prayer. Great God in heaven, we pray now that you would bless to us this evening this word to us, this great triumph of King David. Would you take its truths and all of its implications and press them upon our heart now by your Holy Spirit? Would they give us a deeper admiration and love for Jesus? And in that name, we pray, give us ears to hear and eyes to see our beloved Savior and King. We pray this in his name, amen. Many of you may know in 1928, Alexander Fleming famously discovered the medication penicillin. which, as you may know, sort of moved humanity along pretty significantly. It took us from diseases and infections that would be life-threatening to a minor inconvenience of about a week or so. Many of you have had this happen to you. This is a common occurrence in our own lives today, where you get sick, you go to the doctor, the doctor prescribes you an antibiotic, you go home, you take it, and you feel better. The floodgates, as it were, were sort of opened by this discovery of penicillin. It's almost as if this was a moment in human history that we had been waiting for. So often have we read in our history books of people dying of diseases that you and I find very common and commonly treated today, and yet there was sort of this significant sigh of relief throughout humanity when penicillin sort of opened these gates. I have to imagine, if I were put in King David's situation, that I would feel a sense of relief. The moment he had been waiting for since 1 Samuel 16 had finally arrived. Consider what it took to get here, that you might understand his relief a bit better. Consider that once he was anointed by Samuel, his life was filled with conflict and strife. On the one hand, from the Philistines, the sort of natural enemies of the people of Israel in the land of Canaan, who would come out against Israel again and again. were introduced to David as a shepherd, but immediately he becomes a warrior against the great champion Goliath of the Philistines. And on the other hand, David is constantly chased, not just by the Philistines, but also by his own king, King Saul, who saw, perhaps rightly so in many ways, King David as a threat to the house of Saul. Saul knew that the Lord had taken the kingdom from him in 1 Samuel chapter 15, and Saul chases David over and over and sort of says, okay, come back, okay, go away, okay, come back, okay, go away, all throughout David's life. And so now here he is at the beginning of 2 Samuel, King Saul dies, you think maybe it's time, and Abner sets up the son of Saul as the king of Israel, and so there is civil war. And so finally, we read here of David's relief. The elders of Israel come to him at Hebron and submit to him, make covenant with him, and crown him king over all Israel and Judah. And what this, I believe, communicates to us this evening is a simple truth, that God fulfills his promises. That all of the promises that God makes to his people are always fulfilled, but they're always fulfilled in his timing. This evening, we have three promises we see fulfilled, three major promises of the Old Testament fulfilled in one chapter. We see the promise to David that he would inherit the throne of Israel. fulfilled immediately, but we also see through this section where David takes Jerusalem from the Jebusites, we see the promise to Abraham fulfilled from hundreds of years before. And then in the end when we see the old enemy of David come once again, the Philistines, we see God fulfills his promise to Israel because he loves them. And all of this points to the fact, friends, that we have an answer in our doubts and in our uncertainty. In the dark moments of this life, when we ask the question, why God is this happening? Why are you doing this to me? Why am I undergoing all of this difficulty? Can I be sure that you love me? Can I be certain that you will send your Son to come back for me? Can I be totally sure that you accept me in Jesus' name, that you forgive my sins. God reminds us in 2 Samuel 5 this evening, through fulfilling these promises, that God will fulfill his promise to us in Jesus Christ. That he will fulfill all of his promises because he's done it before and he'll do it again. So friends, let's look first at God's fulfillment of his promise to David. Again, David has sort of waited and waited, and the time is finally here. And you sort of have to laugh with David at the beginning of the chapter. Look again with me at verse one. The elders of Israel come to David at Hebron, and these are their reasons for anointing David, for coronating him as king over them. We are bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh, they say. We are your kin, we are your brothers in this. Why are we fighting? You have to imagine David sitting on his throne at Hebron saying, well, I didn't start it. It's not my war that I began. But they continue. They say, in times past, when Saul was king over us, it was you who led us out and brought in Israel. You were the one who led the people of God in battle. You were the one who achieved victory after victory. Again, you imagine David seated on his throne in Hebron saying, yes, I was also that guy before you brought Ishmael as king over you. This isn't anything new. Thirdly, they say, and the Lord said to you, you shall be shepherd of my people Israel and you shall be prince over Israel. And at this point you might think David would say, yeah, I know, you know, so why have you done this? You might think at this point that David might consider all that's happened for him to get there, all of Saul's suspicion, all of the opposition, all of the foolishness that has happened up to this point, including the civil war, and look at them and say, yeah, I know he promised it to me, and I'm gonna make sure you know, and then he might punish them. Then he might say, okay, you need to pay restitution, you need to sort of go to the widows that you have made through this needless civil war. You might think that David is sort of justified in being frustrated, that if they knew all of this all along, if the elders knew these things, and clearly they did, if they knew that God had promised it to David, why didn't they act like it? But that's not where David goes. Instead, look at verse three. All the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the Lord. David chooses the better way, the better path. A life filled with conflict, suspicion, foolishness, and strife didn't lead David to give up, And it didn't lead David to revenge either, but rather showing himself to be a good and great king, he immediately starts off with peace. Peace. If you make this agreement, if you make this covenant with me, I will protect you. I will do as you say. You are my brothers. I have brought you in and taken you out and brought you back in again. And the Lord has promised. And so I will be your king. I will protect you. I will lead you. And in this, we see that David has fully trusted in God's promise. that despite all of that, in not giving up and in not pursuing revenge, David's faith becomes very clear to us. Now this is a faith we all know, don't we? As we go through the psalms, sometimes the little superscriptions above the psalm tell us when David wrote it. And sometimes it's when he ran from King Saul in the wilderness, and when his life was in danger, probably by King Saul, right? And we read of David's words in the psalms. We take immense comfort from the faith of David in the field, in the cave, and in the wilderness. And I think we should take the same comfort from King David as a great king making peace in this moment. But there's another reason I think that we like the words of King David. Because as we read of David's experience leading up to this moment, we know what David experienced because we experience the same things, don't we? The same types of things. We too are waiting for a moment for a king to come and set himself up over a kingdom. And we experience the things that David says in the Psalms. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me in the loss of a loved one? In the pain and the searing loss of losing a job, of losing children. How on earth could we praise God in the midst of these things? And where do we turn? To the words of David. David, who experienced all of these frustrations. And you have to wonder, on some level, how do the experiences of a Bronze Age king click with a 21st century American? How does that happen? On the one hand, you're nothing like King David, right? In the first place, we have penicillin, and he doesn't, right? In the second place, you're not a king, and neither am I. We don't have the promise of a throne as King David did. We don't have to run and hide in caves. We don't have to worry for our lives. We don't have to have our spouses ripped from us like King David did. We don't have to constantly engage in bloodshed and warfare. How do the circumstances and experiences of a Bronze Age king click with ours? And the answer is because King David is waiting on the same promise to be fulfilled as you and me. That he too is waiting for a glorious king to come and set up his kingdom. God's promise is not just to David, but as we will see in the coming chapters, his promise is to us. about the son of David, such that Jesus in his ministry proclaims, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Jesus comes heralding his own kingdom, which he tells Pilate in John chapter 18, that it is not of this world. It is different than any other kingdom. David's life resonates because he's hanging everything on the same promise. But David nevertheless still feels relief, doesn't he? I mean, this is, we don't want to sort of allegorize this. We don't want to say that David didn't experience comfort in this moment. We don't want to sort of downplay the fulfillment of this promise. It is true that God fulfilled the Davidic promise in this moment of anointing and coronation for King David. And he felt relief. And that tells us, I believe, that we can also feel relief in this life through the promises of God. We can and have experienced the fulfillment of those promises. You see, we are not awaiting a king to take a throne. Our Lord Jesus, in His resurrection and ascension, has already taken it. What we await is the final consummation or the final glorification that Jesus will come and conquer everything to the fullest degree. And so, friends, we can, through seeing the Davidic promise fulfilled here, We can have confidence of relief in this life. I think all of us could maybe point back to a few experiences of relief in Christ. All of us might begin with our conversion. We might begin with that initial wave of relief at the gospel promise that we have been forgiven of our sins in Jesus Christ and that we are accepted children before God our Father. All of us can point to that relief. But we also know that relief can certainly come in the future. Relief is that tiny little thing called disobedience. Despite that relief, despite understanding the gospel and seeing promises fulfilled in front of us, David and we are still prone to disobey. Did you notice it here in verses 13 through 16? Read again with me that David took more concubines and wives from Jerusalem after he came from Hebron, and more sons and daughters were born to David. You see that David changes. The word concubine here wasn't used in Hebron, but it is now used in Jerusalem. David is sort of setting himself up, not just as Israel's king, but as a king in that region, as an ancient Near Eastern Bronze Age king who takes concubines. And in doing so, he directly violates Deuteronomy 17, 17, where God says of the king of Israel that he shall not acquire for himself many wives. lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold." We see that David does not obey despite this relief. And what that means, friends, is that David once again has experienced what you and I experienced, that though we experience relief in this life, we nevertheless still experience temptation. we nevertheless continue in the old person to sin and disobey God. And yet, does God rip away from David the kingdom? Does he not fulfill the promise to him? No, instead we see that God is gracious to David, but that as Ralph Davis says, ultimately the kingdom is only safe in the hands of David's descendant, Jesus Christ. Beloved friends, we will have the full relief of the fulfillment of God's promise, even if we only taste it in bits and pieces today. And the second reason, the second proof of that this evening, comes to us from the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham. I wonder if I asked you about the blood pact you made as a child with your best friend in the tree house behind the creek, behind your house, if you're still fulfilling that promise today. Some of you are sort of laughing because you know, maybe you're thinking, oh yeah, I did promise something to my friend when I was seven years old, right? We all know of this. We know that rarely, though promises last very long. We can point to broken promises between spouses, broken within a matter of hours sometimes. We can point to contracts going to court and agreements being taken back. And so when we hear sort of this longstanding faithfulness, we can sort of go into shock. Let me give you an example of something that I think is shocking. The longest alliance, military alliance in the world today, how long do you think it is? You might think maybe it's the UN. Maybe it's an agreement after World War II. Perhaps it's something from even before that. Maybe it's World War I. No, the longest alliance today is actually the Treaty of the Alliance between Great Britain and Portugal signed in 1386. To this day, 653 years later, Britain and Portugal still enjoy fantastic relations between their two countries. And you have to think, what was going on 653 years ago? Not the Reformation, hadn't happened yet. The doctrine of justification had not received its just rewards. It had not yet been put on display and magnified by Martin Luther. At that time, this alliance was already hundreds of years old. And you may think to yourself, how on earth could that be today? I mean, it's difficult to believe that a treaty in 1386 is still legally binding in the world today, right? Let me tell you of something older. Something older than that is in 2 Samuel 5, God's promise to Abraham. His promise from Genesis chapter 15, let me read Genesis 15, 18 through 21 for you. God says to Abram, on that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying, to your offspring I give this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates. the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, does that sound familiar from the valley later on, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites. David goes to take the city to take Jerusalem, to take Mount Zion from the Jebusites over 800 years after God promised this to Abraham. Once again, Ralph Davis says that if verses one through five taught us that Yahweh's promises are certain in spite of intense opposition, verses six through 10 teach us that his promises are certain in spite of chronological distance. It doesn't matter how long ago Abraham had died. At this point, his body, you'd have to imagine his bones were dust. And David goes to Jerusalem, marches upon the Jebusites, and achieves victory. Now, what's interesting is, we have to do a little bit of detail digging here, because some of this on the surface can be a little unclear. First, we need to sort of address the elephant in the room, this taunt of the Jebusites to David about the lame and the blind. There are a variety of interpretations here, but I think it's decently clear, at the very least, that what they're doing is simply yelling at David, you're not gonna conquer us. and the weakest of society, the lame and the blind, those who can't really fight, they're gonna beat you. And then David sort of, well, he takes the stronghold, but as he does so, he says this weird thing about a water shaft to attack, and then you see in quotes in the ESV, the lame and the blind. What David's doing here is he's not talking about the lame and the blind. He's turning the taunt back upon the Jebusites. Rather than sort of accepting this taunt, rather than saying, oh no, I don't know that I can capture Jerusalem, maybe they're right, David turns around and sort of says, I'm rubber, you're glue, whatever you say to me bounces off and sticks to you, right? He says, no, no, no, you're the lame and the blind. You are the ones that I hate. And let me show you this. If you flip over to chapter 9 here, you see just even in the heading, David's kindness to Mephibosheth. That David says, verse one of chapter nine, and David said, is there still anyone left at the house of Saul that I may show him kindness for Jonathan's sake? Now there was a servant of the house of Saul whose name was Ziba and they called him to David and the king said to him, are you Ziba? And he said, I am your servant. And the king said, is there not still someone at the house of Saul that I may show the kindness of God to him? And Ziba said to the king, there is still a son of Jonathan. He is crippled in his feet. The king said to him, where is he? And Ziba said to the king, he's in the house of Mehir, the son of Amiel at Lodabar. And king David sent and brought him from the house of Mehir, the son of Amiel at Lodabar. And Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, son of Saul, came to David and fell on his face and paid homage. And David said, Mephibosheth. And he answered, behold, I am your servant. And David said to him, do not fear, for I will show you kindness for the sake of your father, Jonathan. and I will restore to you all the land of Saul, your father, and you shall eat at my table always." You see, context tells us that David does not hate the lame and the blind, but rather, in the heat of warfare, David turns the taunt back upon his enemies, which turns out to be prophetically true. Because, spoiler alert, they lose. David wins. We're not told how, we don't really understand the water shaft, we don't understand sort of the details, but in the end, we don't need to know how David took the city of Jerusalem, but rather, he did. And that's the end of the matter. It was so unimpressive, it was so unimportant, that the word of God simply says, and he took the city. That is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise. Let that sink in for a moment. The certainty of this promise that is over 800 years old is fulfilled in the words, and he took the stronghold. That's it. Totally unremarkable. This massive thing in the Old Testament. And God's anointed king comes and takes it. And that's all we need to know. Friends, are you tempted to think That the Bible is an old book filled with speculation, written by old men who were superstitious. This is a prevailing theme in the world around us today. The Bible, it's just old stories. You don't even know who wrote it. We can't even be certain in it. Friends, I can tell you with certainty that God himself will fulfill. We can be certain that time And opposition will not null and void the promises of God. Friends, are you tempted perhaps to what I said earlier, that God couldn't possibly truly love you? That he couldn't possibly truly accept you? That you have sinned once too many? That you've committed that one sin one time too many? That you cannot even begin to know how repentance begins. Beloved friends, know this certainty, that God the Father hears your name in his ears right now. because of the love and the intercession of Jesus Christ. Hear the promise of Hebrews chapter seven, that he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. Friends, the word of God tells us of the fulfillment of his promises to Abraham. to bolster our confidence to know that as He has done, He will do again. He will fulfill His promises. But if that were not enough, if double grace and double proof were not enough, He gives us one more. 2 Samuel chapter 5 tells us of God's fulfillment of His promise to Israel. Now, I love this last little section. Because you have to think at the beginning, right, the elders of Israel tell David, hey, you were the one who sort of won us victory over and over and over again. You were the one who took us out and brought us back. You are a great general. And now the Philistines show back up. And he hears of it, and the Philistines have come to the Valley of Rephaim, and David sort of goes and he says, okay, well, what am I supposed to do here? Instead of the words of the elders of Israel ringing in his ears that you're this great, incredible general, what does David do? What does he do? He goes to the Lord. Verse 19, and David inquired of the Lord, shall I go up against the Philistines? The reason I love this so much is because as God begins to fulfill his promise to Israel, he begins with David. What promise is that? The promise of Deuteronomy chapter seven. Let me read for us from Deuteronomy 7, verse 6. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any of the other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it is because the Lord loves you. Why is Israel the people of God? Simply because the Lord loves them. This is an incredible promise, an incredible statement of God's unconditional love that he chose because he loves us. Not because of anything in Israel, not because they brought something to the table, not because they were so incredible. David is not chosen king because he's such an incredible general. but rather because when faced with conflict with the Philistines again, King David inquires of the Lord. He goes to his master. He goes to his king and inquires of him what to do. And here we see that God protects his people and fulfills his promise of Deuteronomy chapter seven in three ways through King David. First, through his unifying leadership You see, the issue for the Philistines is that they chose their moment incorrectly. Go back a chapter with me, and the Philistines should have said, now's the time to strike. They're shattered, they've got two kings, and one of them just got murdered, and the general fled to the other side, and so we could take at least half their kingdom. Even if we don't beat David, we could leave David alone. Let's go take the north. But instead they wait until King David has unified the nation. And so you see that unity disencumbered Israel of their internal political squabbles that got in the way of kingdom advancement. Friends, we as the Church of Christ need to disencumber ourselves from division and strife and unify ourselves under the kingship of Christ that we would get down to kingdom work. The second way that God protects his people is through King David's pursuit of God's will. The second reason I love that David inquires of the Lord is because this is the exact opposite thing King Saul did. You remember King Saul. Why does he have the kingdom ripped from him in 1 Samuel 15? Because he did not heed the word of the Lord. God spoke to him through Samuel. King Saul didn't go to him. But Samuel came to Saul and said, I'm gonna make this as easy as possible for you. Just do this. Go and destroy the entirety of the Amalekites. Instead of waiting for God to come speak to him, David pursues God's will in first inquiring of the Lord. But then, knowing his position, he listens. Rather than hearing and ignoring, David seeks and obeys the will of God. Friends, I can't promise victory over the Philistines to you. I can't promise victory over temptation to you. But what I can promise is that if we pursue God's will and obey, If we pursue after Him through His means of grace, if we don't seek to answer the question, what does God want from me, and then me answer the question, but go to His Word, we will know victory of a sort. We will have confidence in chasing away temptation, just as Jesus did in the wilderness. And the third reason God, the third way God protects his people Israel is through David's wisdom in humility. Look at verse 20 again with me. And David came to Baal-perizim, and David defeated them there. We read that again. David defeated them there. And he said, the Lord has broken through my enemies before me like a breaking flood. Therefore, the name of that place is called Baal-perizim. You see there in your footnote, in your pew Bibles, that Baal-perizim means the Lord of breaking through. Rather than building a monument to David's success and triumph as a general, rather than building a statue, rather David comes and names the place where the Lord broke through. You ever see on maybe ESPN or SportsCenter, a high school or college basketball player, football player, baseball player, make a really great play, it makes a difference, they win the game. Reporter comes up, hey, what were you thinking, what happened there? Walk us through everything. He goes, first, let me just give God all the glory. You've seen that happen? Then what does he do normally? He talks about how amazing the shot was, how incredible his swing was. He goes on to talk about what happened in himself. David is not doing that. He's not doing a cheesy give God the glory here. He trusts the promise of Deuteronomy 7 so much that instead of claiming victory himself, He listens to God and gives God the victory. He says, I couldn't have done this without God. Such that, did you notice in verse 22, they came up yet again to the same place, and David, instead of saying, well, the Lord told me to do this last time, I guess I'll do it again, what does he do? He inquires of the Lord, and the Lord actually says this time, no, no, no, do it differently. And what does David do? He does it differently, he follows the will of God, he pursues God, such that in the midst of all of this, God claims his victory over the Philistines. Look at verse 21. And the Philistines left their idols there. I have to quote Ralph Davis one more time. He says of this passage that we are reminded and told that we do not have a Namby-Pamby God who is carried away. but a God who achieves victory and breaks through for his people. Friends, in 1940, 12 years after its discovery, penicillin was still priced so high that it was not available to the public. It had been over a decade that penicillin had been discovered, and yet it was still unavailable to the vast majority of people who need it. And so, the Allied forces of World War II had already begun ramping up investigation, they had ramped up production, and they got costs to roughly about $5,600 for a week's worth of treatment. In modern day money, at D-Day, the Allied forces had the modern equivalent of $255 billion worth of penicillin. That's all they could make. That's all they could manufacture. That's all they could afford on top of everything else. And then by 1949, the price dropped to 50 cents a dose. It had completely plummeted. You see, the moment that humanity had been waiting for took us over a decade and a world war to get right. It took an immense amount of human suffering and loss to get penicillin to the mass market. Friends, when we read 2 Samuel 5, we might think this was the moment David had been waiting for. Today, we might be thinking, okay, well, the cross and the resurrection was 2,000 years ago. That was the moment we've been waiting for. No, friends. These moments were good, these moments were absolutely incredible, but let me tell you that David's coronation here, as an enormous moment in Israel's history, points forward to an even greater, an even better time, king and kingdom, in Jesus Christ. The moment we have been waiting for is the moment detailed for us in Revelation 4 and 5, when King Jesus goes and takes the throne. So take your handout for the last hymn with me. Let me tell you why we have a handout. It's because I think this is the moment we've been waiting for. For some reason, our hymnals, which do have this hymn, don't have this verse. Second verse, crown him the Lord of life, who triumphed over the grave, and rose victorious in the strife for those he came to save. His glories now we sing, who died and rose on high. And here it is, this is the moment we've been waiting for. Who died eternal life to bring, and lives that death may die. You can know that relief today, right now, and tomorrow, and the next day, that our Savior lives, that death may die, and he will come again, and set up his kingdom, and kill death forevermore. How do I know this? Because God has promised things in the past, and he's fulfilled them, and he will do so again. Would you pray with me? Almighty God, you are the God who keeps faith forever. You're the God who loves your people. And you don't give us a reason why. You simply do. And in doing so, you make all manner and sorts and types of promises to us. We thank you that in Jesus Christ we find them all, yes and amen. We thank you for our King, King Jesus, who sits upon the throne of heaven and earth, who rules with a rod of iron, who preserves and protects his people. Oh God in heaven, would you glorify him and would you find us to be subservient, loyal subjects to this King Jesus. Make us in his image now, we pray it in his name, amen.