Let me invite you to turn with me to the Old Testament book of Exodus. This morning our sermon passage is found on page 59 in your pew Bibles. We are looking at the end of chapter 17 and all of chapter 18. Just a reminder where we are, we began the year in a year-long study of the Book of Exodus, divided Exodus into its three parts. The first part is a story of deliverance, bringing God's people from enslavery in Egypt to the foot of Mount Sinai, and that's where we find them this morning. This is the last sermon in the first trilogy, as it were, in Exodus. We're going to pause here at the foot of Sinai. We're going to spend the month of May looking at how the Lord who has delivered his people out of Egypt and bondage to slavery through Christ delivers people from bondage to sin. And we will look at the parallels of how Christ saves. And we'll look at stories, four stories through the month of May in the New Testament of Christ drawing people to himself and redeeming them by his blood. We'll come back in June to Exodus. We'll come back to the foot of Mount Sinai. We'll spend the summer studying the Ten Commandments. That's where we're going this morning. We are at the end of the story of the travel out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, through the wilderness, to the foot of Mount Sinai. So I'll be reading beginning in Exodus 17, verse 8, all the way through the end of 17 and all of chapter 18. It's a long passage. Bear with me as we give our attention to the Word of God. Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. So Moses said to Joshua, Choose for us men, and go out and fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand. So Joshua did as Moses told him, and he fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed. Whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side and the other on the other side, so his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword. Then the Lord said to Moses, write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will truly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The Lord is My Banner, saying, A hand upon the throne of the Lord. The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation. Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses' father-in-law, heard of all that God had done for Moses and for Israel and his people, how the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt. Now Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, had taken Zipporah, Moses' wife, after he had sent her home, along with her two sons. The name of the one was Gershom, for he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land. And the name of the other was Eleazar, for he said, the God of my father was my help and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh. Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, came with his sons and his wife to Moses in the wilderness, where he was encamped at the mountain of God. And when he sent word to Moses, I, your father-in-law Jethro, am coming to you with your wife and her two sons with her, Moses went out to meet his father-in-law and bowed down and kissed him. And they asked each other of their welfare and went into the tent. Then Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord had done to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel's sake, all the hardship that had come upon them in the way and how the Lord had delivered them. And Jethro rejoiced for all the good the Lord had done to Israel in that he had delivered them out of the hand of the Egyptians. Jethro said, Blessed be the Lord who has delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of Pharaoh, and has delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods, because in this affair they dealt arrogantly with the people. And Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and sacrifices to God, and Aaron came with the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses' father-in-law before God. The next day Moses sat to judge the people, and the people stood around Moses from morning till evening. When Moses' father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the people, he said, What is this you are doing for the people? Why do you sit alone, and all the people stand around you from morning till evening? And Moses said to his father-in-law, Because the people come to me to inquire of God. When they have a dispute, they come to me, and I decide between one person and another, and I make them know the statutes of God and His laws. Moses' father-in-law said to him, What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to do it alone. Now obey my voice. I will give you advice, and God be with you. You shall represent the people before God and bring their cases to God, and you shall warn them about the statutes and the laws, and make them known the way in which they must walk and what they must do. Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God and are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands and hundreds of fifties and of tens, and let them judge the people at all times. Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide themselves. So it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you. If you do this, God will direct you, you will be able to endure, and all these people also will go to their place in peace. So Moses listened to the voice of his father-in-law and did all that he had said. Moses chose able men out of all Israel and made them heads over the people, chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. And they judged the people at all times. Any hard case they brought to Moses, but any small matter they decided for themselves. Then Moses let his father-in-law depart, and he went away to his own country. The grass withers, the flower fades. The word of our God will stand forever. Let's go to him again in prayer. Lord, we pray this morning simply that you would speak to us. It's often in passages like this and narratives in the Old Testament that we get lost, and we pray that you would reveal yourself to us in fresh ways today. Would we see you, the God of great promises? Would we see you, a faithful and good God who leads and saves and cares for his people? Show us yourself, we pray, in your word this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. When we turn to the pages of the New Testament, there is one story in particular that helps us make sense of what is going on here at the end of Exodus chapter 18. The story is of the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. Just a few weeks ago, we celebrated his death and his resurrection at Easter. In a few more weeks, we will celebrate his ascension. He ministered and lived and walked on earth for 40 days, and then he ascended to the Lord. And it's the end of the Gospels at the ascension of Christ. It's also the beginning of the story of Acts. And if you remember how it goes, the disciples there with Jesus want him to usher in the kingdom now. They want him to get the armies, they want him to get the chariots, and they want him to take over now. So they ask him, when are you going to usher in this kingdom? He answers them, basically, not now. Then he ascends into heaven. And they stand there watching. They're gazing into heaven as he goes up. And these two men in white robes, these two angels say to the disciples who are gaping into heaven, they say, why do you stand there looking into heaven? You see, they're shocked that Jesus is not bringing heaven back now. He's already done all the stuff. He's died. He's raised from the dead. He's shown himself. So isn't it time? Isn't it time now for the kingdom to come? And what Jesus is telling them is that as one story is drawing to a close, the other is just beginning. This is just the beginning of his work of drawing the nations to himself. This is just the beginning of the work of the church. And they are unaware. They are unprepared. And the angels basically tell them, get to work. and He will come back when you least expect it. That's what we have here at the end of the first trilogy of Exodus. The Hebrews think it's over. We've gone through the Passover. We've gone through the Red Sea. Now it's time for the Promised Land, right? But isn't that the next step in the promises? Shouldn't we be in the Promised Land now? And the Lord is showing them and us something in this passage that there is this wait. There is life in the wilderness between the cross and the return of Christ. What is God doing in this life in the wilderness? What's He doing in our heart? We saw that last week. The testing and the grumbling and complaining. What we're going to see this morning is what He's doing in the nations. And we're going to see that as God fulfills even more of His promises, the news spreads and even more promises are fulfilled. The news is spreading of what God has done, and as it spreads, He fulfills His gospel promises of His word spreading to the nations. I want to see that in this passage in two ways. There's two stories I'm going to pull from these stories together, two themes. So we're going to see two themes this morning. The first theme that's going to show us how God fulfills this great promise is through a frail leader. There is a frail leader in both of these stories. What's interesting is that Moses is not really that strong or that powerful at the beginning when we meet him. He tries to take matters into his own hands, and then when God actually tells him what to do with the bush, he doesn't want to do it. So we've seen Moses isn't really that great of a leader. It took him a while to be faithful to the Word of God. And now he's been faithful for a while, and yet at the very end here, as this one story is drawn to a close, we hear these two tales of what? The frailty of Moses. Even as we begin, we can note that we as people tend to want to credit other people for great things. We want to credit ourselves for our own salvation. We want to credit other great leaders for saving us. And here we see this revelation. Just in case you were deceived in thinking Moses saved you, it's not Moses. Moses can do nothing. He can't even hold his hands up during a battle. Moses can do nothing. It is the Lord who fights for his people. It is the Lord who saves his people. Let's be clear. And so there's these two stories that tell of a frail leader. The first story is this defeat of Amalek. This is the first battle. There will be many battles to follow. with God's people. This is the introduction of Joshua. We will follow Joshua if we keep reading the story in the book of Joshua. He comes and he is appointed to go and fight this battle against Amalek. It's unclear why Amalek wants to fight against Israel. It's possible that now all of a sudden the Hebrews have a lot of water where there once was no water. Remember that last week. They have this rock that's miraculously providing water for all of these people and maybe Amalek and his gang hears about this wonderful rock in the wilderness and they want it. We don't know why, but they come and attack, and one thing is clear, the Amalekites are better at war than the Israelites. If it was just Amalek versus Joshua, then the Israelites would be destroyed. You note there that whenever Moses' hands are down, whenever it's just mano a mano, whenever it's just a worldly battle, the bad guys win. It's only when God steps in and intervenes that we see that his people win the battle. And so God tells Moses to go up on this hilltop with his staff and raise his staff. Literally here, the rod is mightier than the sword in the battle. If it's sword against sword, then the Malacats are going to win. But when God's rod, when his staff, when his power comes in, he will clearly win this battle. The problem is, Moses is not strong enough. I mean, nobody's strong enough to stand up all day and hold their hands up with a rod in their hands. And Moses, at this age, certainly isn't strong enough. So they bring him a rock and they bring these other two guys in to hold his arms. And now God has, for some reason, attached his boundless power to the ability of an old man to hold his arms over his head. Doesn't it seem like a strange battle plan? The God would say, as long as Moses keeps his hands up, he will win. And as if God is nervously watching from heaven, saying, I hope Moses did some shoulder presses last week, or else my guys are in trouble. That's not what's going on, of course. God is clearly in charge of this battle. But what is going on is that for some reason, the Lord attaches his endless, boundless, infinite power to a weak man. and a weak means of holding up this staff so that his people might win the battle. The main point here, of course, is that God fights for his people. The sub-point is that he does it in strange ways. Wouldn't you think the easier way to do it is just give Israel a bigger army? Just give them some more chariots? Just give them some more swords? Give them some more guys like Joshua and they could just run through the Amalekites? He doesn't do that. He gives them a weaker army so that his power might be shown through them. He intentionally weakens his own people so that he might shine all the brighter in this battle. So his power might shine through human weaknesses. And this is how God still works. He attaches his power to frail human means. Wouldn't we as a church love to have control of the government and the army? Wouldn't we love to have an endless budget? Wouldn't we love to have Bill Gates on our payroll, right, to design our website? Wouldn't we love to have all the wisdom and the power of the world at our fingertips? Instead, the Lord gives us stuff like an old man holding up a rod. In order that we faithfully obey the seemingly weak and meaningless things He has given us. In order that His power might shine through. We talked in our new members class this morning about the ordinary means of grace. He gives us preaching. This powerless thing. He gives us prayer, which seems to the world like just speaking into thin air. He gives us a little bit of wine, a little bit of bread, and a little bit of water to fight the armies of the evil one. And he chooses to attach his power to these weak things. Not so that he can work despite them, but so that he can work through them. Friends, we should look at this passage and we should take great confidence that the Lord has done this through Moses. And that he does that same thing in his power through us. That we don't need all the armies and the swords and the chariots of the Amalekites. We need the Lord. We need his power and his presence with us. Moses' frailty shows at this crucial point the power of the Lord through a frail leader. The other way we see a frail Moses is when Jethro comes. Jethro comes from Midian, he brings Moses, Zipporah, his wife, and his two sons. Presumably, at some point, Moses sent them back as things were getting kind of rough in Egypt. So he sent his wife and his sons back to live with his father-in-law. And so now that they've left Egypt, they're in the desert, the father-in-law brings them to him. And it's a joyful reunion. It's a happy reunion of Moses to see his father-in-law. But there's a problem. Jethro sticks around and he watches what happens, and he sees what Moses is doing, and he says, there's a problem. Let's see chapter 18. Look at verse 17. Moses' father-in-law said to him, what you're doing is not good. You and the people will certainly wear yourselves out for the thing is too heavy. The problem is Moses, he's fulfilling his job as a judge and a lawgiver. This is part of what Moses is called to do. He sits as a judge over his people. Well, there's a lot of people now. Deuteronomy chapter 1 says they are as numerous as the stars of the heaven. There are a lot of people because God has fulfilled His promises that there will be a lot of people. This job is easy when there's 70 people in your crew, right? But when there are thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions, Moses' job is impossible because God has blessed the people. He's going to wear himself out. The thing is too heavy. What is highlighted for Jethro when he comes? It's Moses' frailty again. It's Moses' inability. It's Moses' weaknesses. And so he has this idea. His solution is in verse 21, look for able men among the people who fear God, who are trustworthy, hate a bribe, and place them over the people. Essentially, this is John Currid's words. It's a judicial hierarchy. where Moses is like the Supreme Court. So there's all these other little courts of all these faithful men to judge the disputes and to explain the law of God, and Moses sits on the highest court. And it's this helpful solution, Jethro gives it to him, he says, here's my advice, you do whatever God says, and Moses implements it. We find in Deuteronomy chapter 1, he puts it into place. Two, and the strategy here is to appoint godly leaders. You notice these leaders are qualified. There are qualifications about who's to lead God's people. So Moses is to find and appoint godly leaders, and verse 22 tells us, they will bear the burden with you. Why is there more leaders than just one? So they share the burden of leadership together. So they bear the burden of leading God's people together. Now, of course, this foreshadows church government in the New Testament. In the New Testament, church leaders are qualified. If you want to go this afternoon and compare these qualifications to 1 Timothy chapter 3, there is some overlap and some similarity about the qualifications for the leaders of God's people. There's also the idea in the New Testament of the plurality of leadership, of sharing the burden of leadership. And so something as boring as how our church government is structured declares the frailty of human leaders and our need for Christ, the King. Moses was not the answer. The Lord is the answer. When we display that we are weak and needy, we can't do it by ourselves, we are displaying the power and the government of the Lord over His own people. It's laid out here even with such a wonderful leader as Moses. So how are we to think about these frail, these pictures of a frail leader? Well, in two ways. One is just to remember that every leader is frail. Every leader is weak. Every leader is flawed. Every leader's arms get tired, right? No leader can bear the burden of all the needs of the people of God, and to expect our leaders to be any different sets them up to failure. I'm sure you haven't thought this in particular, but if you think about it for long, you would say, I'd rather have Moses as my pastor than Sean, right? Moses couldn't do it. He couldn't do it alone. He was frail. He was weak. To expect our leaders to be perfect sets them up to fail. And it sets us up to be disillusioned, where we go on an endless search for these perfect leaders. There's a problem in the church. It's been there for centuries. It's called celebrity pastors. And it's people who are drawn to personalities, drawn to celebrities, drawn to someone they think is the perfect leader, because if you can find the perfect leader, then everything's going to be perfect in your life. The problem is perfect leaders don't need Jesus, do they? So they don't preach Jesus. They don't tell you about your Savior. Moses, intending to or not, told the people to depend more and more on the Lord, because he was frail. And that's the ultimate application when we look at weak leaders, is they must point us to Christ. There is only one leader whose arms never get tired in fighting for his people, and that is King Jesus. There's only one leader who can bear the burdens of all of his people, and that is Christ the judge and the lawgiver. This is a glorious picture of our need for Christ. Every one of us needs the Lord. Some of you are trusting in Him this morning, some of you are not trusting in Christ. But I can say confidently, every single one of you needs Him. Because you are not enough on your own. It's not enough just to find a good leader or to find a good pastor. You need the Lord. Every one of us needs this perfect judge, this perfect king, this perfect savior. So when you read the Old Testament and you read about these frail and faulty men and women, praise the Lord for your savior. Because everything in the Gospels tells us he's not frail and faulty. He's perfect, and he is victorious, and he is our king. The second question as we read these stories of a frail Moses is to ask, does a frail leader put God's plan at risk? Wouldn't God want a better leader than Moses to accomplish his great plan? Does a frail leader put God's plan at risk? And the answer, of course, in the second theme is no, it does not. Because first, we see a frail leader in these two stories, but secondly, in both stories, we see a faithful Lord. There is a faithful Lord in both of these stories. We have been tracing in Exodus the fulfillment of the promises of God. If you remember, we started with people who were once 70, and we're now a multitude of people. And the reason were because God had blessed them in fulfillment of the promises of God, so he's fulfilled that blessing to his people. Another promise that God made in the book of Genesis was to have his presence with his people. They will be his people, and he will be their God. Well, we're on the way. The people are on the way. They will get the tabernacle soon, and they will move to the promised land soon. They have a growing sense of the presence of God in their midst. Another promise is for land. Remember, they were promised land. And again, they are moving towards that land. That promise is moving towards being fulfilled. But the final promise they made to Abraham was he would be a blessing to the nations. All we've seen so far is that Egypt has been destroyed. It doesn't seem like God has been blessing the nations through his people. But we see that in these final, in the final section of this trilogy. I want you to notice there's two different responses from two different Gentiles. Gentile, the people who are not the Jews. The God's people in the end of this section encounter two groups or two representatives of Gentiles. There's Amalek on one side and Jethro on the other side. And there are two different responses. And there's this pattern. After God works amongst His people, the Hebrews, then the gospel is spreading to Gentiles. This happens under Jesus, as he goes to the Jew first and the Gentile. It happens in the book of Acts, when the Spirit falls on the Jews in Acts chapter 2, and it falls on the Gentiles in Acts chapter 10. It happens in Paul's ministry, where every new city he goes to, he goes to the synagogue. And then he goes out and he sees the Greeks and the Gentiles and shares the gospel with them. That's what's happening here in two different responses. The first response from the Gentiles is to war against God. That's what we see with Amalek. He wars against. God. If you turn back a page to Exodus chapter 15, we read there in the Song of Moses, as the people are reflecting and praising God for what he has done for them, We read in verse 14, the peoples, Exodus 15 verse 14, the peoples have heard. They tremble. Pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia. Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed. Trembling seizes the leaders of Moab. All the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away. You see the news has spread, and the nations are fearing God. It's unclear here why Amalek does not fear God. But we read in Deuteronomy chapter 25, he clearly does not fear the Lord. He is showing forth his unbelief. He sees an opportunity when he hears the story of redemption and provision for the people of God. He sees an opportunity for his guys to get some water in the desert. He does not fear the Lord and what he has done. And we read at the end of verse chapter 17, In verse 14, what happens to the heart who has been hardened in unbelief? The Lord said to Moses, write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ear of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. For some of you, that should scare you. For most of us, that should cause us to fear the Lord. He does not let unbelief and hatred go unpunished. He is the good judge. He is the just judge, and he will not permit that in any nation, in any people on the earth. We are to compare here, however, the response of Amalek to the response of Jethro. Because the second Gentile who responds is not by unbelief and hatred. It is belief, and it is confession, and it is repentance. And it is, in fact, I believe, conversion here. If the first response to the Gentiles is to war with God, the second response is to worship God. Look at chapter 18, beginning in verse 9. Jethro has shown up, he kind of knows where his son-in-law is and where to bring the kids, but he doesn't know everything that's happened. And so Moses runs out and he meets Jethro and they go and they sit together in the tent and Moses spends, it seems like, maybe hours telling this story to Jethro. The same story we've just read. Moses wrote all this and so presumably he's telling something pretty similar to this to his father-in-law. Jethro hears of the deliverance of God and he says in verse 9, Jethro rejoiced. at all the good the Lord had done. Now you need to remember Jethro is a Midianite priest, maybe a high priest among the Midianites. He does not worship Yahweh. He does not worship the God of Israel. He worships a false god. He worships an idol. And here he is rejoicing at what the God of Israel has done. And then look at verse 10. There's this confession on his lips. This is his conversion. He confesses to bless this Lord. You notice it's not God, it's all capitals, L-O-R-D, the proper name, Yahweh, the God of Israel. He blesses this God, because He is now converted to worshipping and serving the God of the Hebrews. Verse 11, Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods, greater than my God. Hear Him saying that. Because in this affair they dealt arrogantly with the people. Jethro here is converted at the story of the redemption of God, that he has worked for his people. But notice what Moses says when he tells the story. I skipped over this, but go back to verse 8. Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord had done to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel, all the hardship that had come upon them in the way, and now the Lord had delivered them. What is key to his story? All of that miserable stuff. He told his father-in-law, an unbeliever who's come into his house, he's told him all the bad stuff that happened to him as he followed Yahweh. He tells him how he did not believe God when he appeared to him at the burning bush. He tells him how the people of God disbelieved him when Moses first went to them. He tells them the danger and the fear they felt trembling on the edge of the Red Sea when they should have feared God and said they feared the power of man. He tells them how the people grumbled against God in the wilderness. He tells them how the people rejected the commands of God in the wilderness. He recites the hardship he went through. Why? In order to show the deliverance of God. Moses does not say, hey Jethro, father-in-law, let me tell you what I did this last couple months and years. He says, look at the failure I was. Look how my projects and plans failed. And look how the Lord delivered me. What an example for us of sharing your faith. How often is our message in sharing faith, I got it figured out, you get your life together, and then you'll be fine with God. That's hypocrisy. That's not the gospel. Moses is sharing his desperate need and his failure and the sin of the people, and yet the God who delivers people out of sin, and out of punishment, and out of wrath. This is vital in how we share the message of the gospel. Jethro hears it. He is converted. Verse 12 tells us he offers sacrifices. This is now, of course, a rebuke to the Hebrews who've been grumbling for three chapters. They know everything. They have all the promises of God. They have the signs of God. They have the ordinances of God. They have it all. And yet they keep grumbling. And here comes a Gentile out of nowhere, and he is praising and rejoicing in the Lord. Write down in your notes Matthew chapter 8, verse 10. This is where the Lord heals the paralyzed daughter of a centurion, a Gentile. And the Lord Jesus says, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. Moses could say that, looking at Jethro, I think, at this point. With no one in Israel have I found such faith. Of course, Jethro is only the beginning. As they go into the promised land, Rahab, the prostitute who has helped them as the spy, she joins the people of God. Ruth, a foreigner, a Gentile, joins the people of God. As the promises spread, as the people spread, the Gentiles, they come in, they kind of trickle in. There's these small stories of it in the Old Testament. And then we get to the New Testament, and the floodgates break forth. and the Spirit is poured out. And people come, and they hear from every tribe and tongue and nation, and the Gospel goes forth out of Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and to the very ends of the earth. And it is spreading, and it is still spreading as He is drawing His people through frail leaders, but a faithful Lord to Himself. This is life in the wilderness for the people of God. We all go through hardships, we go through suffering, we are weak, and we are failing, but through it, His gospel is going forth by the power of His Spirit to the ends of the earth. Maybe you ask yourself, why am I having to endure life in this wilderness? Why do I keep having to go through these tests? Why do I keep having to depend on the Lord? If He loved me, wouldn't He just come back? What is taking so long? Why are we attacked like the people were attacked by Amalek? Why are we wandering sinfully and aimlessly at times? Well, brothers and sisters, I'll tell you one reason. It's for Jethro to come in. And it's for the lost to come in. The door of salvation stands open. He has given His people in the wilderness a song on their lips. He has given them a story in their lives and in their hearts of what He, the Savior and Deliverer, has done. Why are they wandering? So that the nations might come in. Friends, He is a faithful Lord. We all are frail and broken before Him at His very feet, but He is working mightily and majestically and graciously to draw us, to draw His people to Himself. Let us remember that. as we endure the time in the wilderness. Let us pray. Lord, how faithful indeed you are to overlook the sin of your people. In fact, to place the very punishment of that sin on the head of your son, Jesus Christ. And we rejoice tonight at that salvation this morning, that that salvation that is ours. We give thanks that you have waited for us, that you have delayed the return of your son, that we might come in. I prayed if there be any here this morning who do not believe that you would stir their hearts this very hour, knowing that that door of salvation stands open, that they might come in and pray Holy Spirit for you to work We pray the Lord that you would give us faith as we endure life in the wilderness, that we do our own frailty and the frailty of others, and that in so enduring our eyes would be set upon you and you would grow ever stronger and ever more powerful. And when we are tempted to trust leaders, we're tempted to trust ourselves. You would rebuke us and you would reveal to us just all that you are on our behalf. Make us a faithful and trusting people. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.