If you would please turn with me to the book of Hebrews chapter 11. This is our third sermon on verse 32. You just can't rush through the hall of faith. But for the sake of context, I want to read again verses 32 through 34. So let us hear the word of God. And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousnesses, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong. became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. May God bless this, the reading of his word. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you and we praise you for this, your day, the Lord's day, where we can come and we can worship, where we can praise you. We can Sing your praises, your glories, your magnificence, where we can revel in your mercy and your grace. Lord, as we come now to the preaching of your word, the proclamation of your law and of your gospel, Lord, we ask that you would apply these things to our hearts, that you would hide your servant behind the cross and make yourself known in this place. Lord, glorify your name today in the preaching of your word in such a way that all who are here would give praise, honor and glory to you and to you alone. For Lord God, you are worthy and no other is. These things we pray in the name of your son, our beloved savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. We have had the privilege of examining in the book of Hebrews chapter 11, the way in which faith works. What is it that faith does? How does faith worship? What are the works that faith does? How does faith sojourn in a foreign land? How does faith trust? What does faith do in those to whom it has been granted? especially as we've surveyed these individual test cases of men like Noah, men like Moses, and most recently David and Samuel. And now we want to come and examine what faith did in the prophets. What are the works that faith accomplished through these men? But even as we come to declare that statement by faith, the prophets, which is the title of our sermon, We have to acknowledge that it's a loaded term. The word prophet carries great meaning to it, and especially in terms of whatever context you're coming out of. For many people, the prophet is a term that speaks of someone who's extensively religious. Many think of it in terms of one who is able to predict that which is yet to come, a kind of soothsayer who can speak the matters of the future, I grew up in eastern Arizona in a predominantly Mormon area, and so for a lot of people in that kind of context, the word prophet carries with it the connotation of the Mormon prophet, our prophet that now lives and speaks these things. Perhaps for those in the more northern Arizona section would be, unfortunately, would carry with it the connotation of the fundamentalist Mormon prophet that would take underage girls as his wife and all of those things. For others, perhaps, they think of the comic book character, the prophet. There can be a wide variety of connotations that we can have for it, but the word prophet itself literally means fourth speaker. It's a term that's used most fundamentally to speak of someone who speaks on the behalf of another. It's an ambassador of sorts. And of course is frequently and most often used to denote someone who speaks on the behalf of God. So when we say prophet, we're talking about a man who has been commissioned and called to simply say what God has told him to say. It isn't intrinsically about predicting the future or declaring things that have not yet happened, but about declaring whatever it is that God has told him to say. And so we want to first examine who this prophet is. We want to know what is a prophet if we are to understand what the prophets have done by faith. And as I poured over this concept this week, something kept coming back to mind for me. There's a poem that I encountered in my undergraduate years that was dedicated to Jankarski. It was written by Paul Genega. And he wrote it in honor of Jankarski, and it's titled The Courier. Jankarski was actually a Polish courier who was given an extraordinary task. This was the man, and for those of you who know your history, in World War II, the Holocaust was something that we found out in the course of World War II. It was not something that was known at the outset. It was something that was essentially discovered as the armies marched through German territory. And Jan Karski was the Polish courier who was sent by the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto to inform the world of the existence of the Holocaust. Basically, he was given the task of telling the world, this is what has happened, hidden from our eyes. And the poem is as follows. I am carrying the sea in my cupped hands, not drops of it, not liters, the whole dark sloshing sea. Claws pinch, nettles sting, teeth rip at my palm lines. It hurts to hold this much, to be so small and human, running, running as the bloody sun runs west, carrying the sea in my cupped hands. The faster my legs move, the more I try to get there, the more I fear I spill. Rancid fish and rackweed, broken shell and coral mark my travel like a tide line. Everywhere I've been, I've sown salt. Everywhere now, the rich green earth laid waste, but I do not look behind, not behind and not above, where the white moon nightly is devouring the stars, first in nibbles, then vast mouthfuls, bloating like a leech, whipping storms as cruel as history pressed inside my hands. These poor dumb beasts, my hands, how much they want to toss it all away, to empty it, in trenches to wall it up for good, how much I want to fold myself in pine boughs, to, like on high ground humming, to be free of this thing I've been anointed with so horribly, to make it all mad fancy, mere nightmare. It is not. Straight ahead, face forward, I must run, run as the bloody sun runs west and bring the sea for the whole wide world to hold. The journey is a minute, a millennium, both. But I do get there, I do. I'm ushered into a chamber of telephones and chairs, an ordinary room of the 20th century. There are well-dressed men walk in, mopping brows with well-starched handkerchiefs, and I want to beg forgiveness to explain I'm just the courier, a small insignificant that the news is not the messenger, but my words are lost in wind. The three stand stiffly staring, they smile, they nod, and I I let it go, waves of salt and bone flooding from my hands, drowning all the ordinary rooms of this century and the next. From the sea floor I start rising through a maelstrom black as ink, past the dead eyes of the living, the live eyes of the dead, till I surface with my hands, two smooth and separate shells knifed open like an oyster which can never join again. I love this poem because it conveys the weightiness and the terror of being commissioned to carry so terrible a message. And as I have read through that poem, I've often thought of Isaiah, of Jeremiah, of those who were called to be the messengers of God, to declare God's condemnation. The way in which the children of Israel would be exiled from their own land, never to return in their own lifetime. The way in which they had to declare to God's people that an army was coming under God's calling. and they were proclaiming judgments. But one great distinction exists between Paul Ginnicus Currier and what we see in the Old Testament prophets, and that is that the prophets also offered hope. They proclaimed not just the truth of God's rebuke, but there was an exhortation to repentance and a promise of the forgiveness of God for those who repented and believed in their God. And I wanna deal with Hebrews 11, 32, this description of the prophets and what God has done in them by faith in the course of four points. The first is the prophetic office itself. Second, I wanna deal with rebuke and exhortation. Third, prophesying Christ. And fourth, the application. So prophetic office, rebuke and exhortation, prophesying Christ, and the application. There was a movie that came out several years ago called U-571. And it was a military, one of these submarine war movies. And it's a neat film. But for a lot of people, the thing that sticks with them most out of the movie was the quote that was stated right at the beginning. And as far as I know, it's an anonymous quote. Nobody really knows where its point of origin is that I've been able to find. But it says, a hero is an ordinary man in extraordinary, doing extraordinary things in extraordinary times. And we might easily reword this to describe the prophet, as an ordinary man given extraordinary faith for an extraordinary calling. And as the author of Hebrews is describing the prophets to us when he makes this reference in Hebrews 11, 32, that he doesn't have the time to explore all that God did by faith through the prophets. He's directly addressing the office. Those men who were appointed to serve as prophets of God. And also contained within this is one of the three categories of the Old Testament. The Hebrew Bible was broken up into three sections. There was the Torah, which is what we call the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Then there was the Nevi'im or the prophets, which is Isaiah and Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the minor prophets that are there at the end. And then there's the writings or the Ketuvayim, which is the historical books. like Joshua and 1st and 2nd Kings, 1st and 2nd Chronicles. It also has the Psalms and the Proverbs. But we want to also understand that there are others who were called to serve for brief periods as prophets. They weren't brought into this official office. It wasn't their primary calling, but were still called upon to be prophets, still called upon to be those who declared the truths of God, men like David. who wrote the Psalms. The prophets were often, and some theologians say always, inaugurated specifically by a vision or a rapture unto heaven. The passage that was already read this morning in Isaiah six describes the way in which Isaiah is given this vision. He is called up into the throne room of God and granted a glimpse of glory. And he's able to see this majesty of God, albeit in shadow. It's not the fullness of God. He was unable to behold that. But indeed, he's given a glimpse of the throne room of God, of God's glory and majesty. And this is his calling into the office. We see the same thing in Ezekiel 2. And he said to me, son of man, stand on your feet and I will speak to you. Then the spirit entered me when I when he spoke to me and set me on my feet. And I heard him who spoke to me. And he said to me, son of man, I am sending you to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me. They and their fathers have transgressed against me to this day. For they are impudent and stubborn children. I am sending you to them. And you shall say to them, thus says the Lord God." This is Ezekiel's commissioning in the throne room of God. What's interesting about this is that we see parallels in the New Testament. Paul describes a similar calling that was given to him in 2 Corinthians 12, verses two through four, where he says that he was called up into the third heavens. We also see this in Revelation one verses nine through 11, where John is given his commission and indeed the rest of Revelation can be described in much the same fashion. And those two passages are important because they're tying, God is tying them back into this office of the prophet. Those who were called to speak on the behalf of God and declare the truths that were essential for the people to know. The title of prophets was an extraordinary calling. It was a title that was first applied to Abraham in Genesis chapter 20 verse seven. And we actually see it further defined when we get to the era of Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 13 verses one through five. It says, if there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass of which he spoke to you saying, let us go after other gods, which you have not known, and let us serve them. You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or the dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice. You shall serve him and hold fast to him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage to entice you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall put away the evil from your midst. Likewise, in Deuteronomy 18 verses 20 through 22, it says, but the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. And if you say in your heart, how shall we know the word which the Lord has spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You shall not be afraid of him. So we see the office of the prophet in these passages and others under the Pentateuch defined where it's further delineated. And we see that the role of prophet was intrinsic to the times and eras of the judges where God would send men to speak to the children of Israel. Indeed, in one instance, we see him send a prophetess who was intrinsic to the monarchy eras, We see great prophets like Elijah and Elisha who were sent to declare the will of God, the truth of God to the people. We see prophets scattered throughout the time of the exile. Daniel was a prophet during the era of the exile. Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, labored much of his ministry during the time of the exile. until he was finally carried away into Egypt. Indeed, there were prophets during the time of the return of the Children of Israel, but it was their absence that marked and defined the intertestamental period. That great expansive time between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament is a crucial time, and it's defined by the absence of the prophets. where God sent no man to say, thus says the Lord. No one came to declare the will of God. It was a deafening silence, as they say. And indeed, the prophetic office would be concluded with John the Baptist. John the Baptist was the last of the Old Testament prophets, as they say. I always have to smile when I say that because we have an Old Testament prophet dropped into the New Testament. And John the Baptist always seems kind of out of place in his own way. But he was the last of the Old Testament style prophets. And then we see that office subsumed under the apostolic office, wherein God brought up a different kind of prophet. Men who declared the same truths, but in a different balance. and in a greater light. But as we look at these Old Testament prophets, these great men that God raised up and granted such extraordinary faith, we see the need of that extraordinary faith. And one of the ways in which it was so necessary was because their labors were often marked by extraordinary tasks, burdensome tasks. In Jeremiah, Chapter 27, verses 1 through 2. It says, In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, the king of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Thus says the Lord to me, Make for yourselves bonds and yokes, and put them on your neck, and send them to the king of Edom, the king of Moab, the king of the Ammonites, the king of Tyre, and the king of Sidon, by the hand of the messengers who come to Jerusalem, to Zedekiah, king of Judah. In Isaiah 20, It says, in that year, in the year of Tarzan came to Ashdod when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him and he fought against Ashdod and took it. At the same time, the Lord spoke to Isaiah, the son of Emmaus, saying, go and remove the sackcloth from your body and take the sandals off your feet. And he did so walking naked and barefoot. Then the Lord said, just as my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot three years, For a sign and a wonder against Egypt and Ethiopia, so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians as prisoners, and the Ethiopians as captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt. Then they shall be afraid and ashamed of Ethiopia, their expectation, and Egypt their glory. And the inhabitants of this territory will say in that day, surely such is our expectation. wherever we flee for help, to be delivered from the king of Assyria, and how shall we escape? Ezekiel chapter 4 verses 9 through 17, we see this calling of God upon Ezekiel at first to cook all of his food. He was required to ration out his own food and water. He was limited in how much he could drink and how much he could eat. And even that which he ate, his bread was to be cooked. At first he was commanded to cook it upon human excrement. And then God pulls that back and only commands him to cook it over cow excrement. And of course, in the narrative of Hosea, we see the way in which Hosea was commanded to marry a prostitute. This burdensome task that was given to him. And when I preach through Hosea, I've just recently started to go back over those sermons for the sake of transcribing them for another task. But when I preached through that series, I took the time and I labored to press upon the congregation the weightiness of the fact that this was real time. This was real history. This wasn't just words on a page. There was a real man who was called upon by God to go and take a prostitute and bring her into his own home. and to love her as his wife, to uphold her, to encourage her, and to serve her as his husband, as her husband. And to watch her leave him, to watch her bear children from other men. And the weight that he had to bear in that task. Indeed, God often gave these men extraordinary tasks above and beyond their labor of simply declaring the truth. But before any of their labors began, each of these men had to listen. Each of these men had to be still and know their God and be taught so that they would know that which they had to go out and declare. And the first part of their declaration that we want to examine is the rebuke and exhortation. This is probably the most, this is really the most prominent aspect of what the prophets labored in. The bulk of their books is consumed with rebuke and exhortation. Just in pure word count. But I would argue that this is not the primary task of the prophets, even though it was the most prominent. It was essential that they spend the majority of their time on this task of rebuke and exhortation because it was the groundwork, it was that which broke up the hardened heart of the people. It was that which declared the fullness of the holiness of God as these men personified the law to the children of Israel. It has been said that the prophets of the Old Testament were really God's covenant lawyers. They were prosecuting lawyers who were coming and presenting a case of God against a rebellious nation, against rebellious priests, against rebellious kings, and declaring the way in which these men had violated the law of God. And this required great faith. for these men to serve as covenant lawyers, for these men to personify the law to the children of Israel. Because as they came to declare condemnation, as they came to declare the way in which the people had fallen short of the glory of God, they were met with hardened hearts. In the book of Isaiah, chapter 6, verses 9 through 13, this is immediately after the glory of this vision of Isaiah. He's given this glorious view of the throne room of God, where God speaks and the foundations shake. And God says, who will go? Whom shall I send and who will go for us? And Isaiah says, here I lie, send me. And he said, go and tell this people. Keep on hearing, but do not understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy and shut their eyes lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and return and be healed." Then I said, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitants, the houses are without a man, the land is utterly desolate. The Lord has removed men far away in the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land, but yet a 10th will be in it and will return and will be for consuming as a terrible tree or as an oak whose stump remains when it is cut down. So the holy seed shall be at stump. In Ezekiel chapter three, verses seven through 11, God tells Ezekiel, I will make your face hard as flint because the people's faces will be hard as flint. You will be speaking to a people who will not hear you. This is your task. And these men needed even greater faith when their declaration of rebuke and exhortation was answered with persecution. In 1 Kings 19 verses 1 through 4, we find Elijah immediately after his great conquest. Elijah has just slain the prophets of Baal. There has been a miraculous display of the glory of God as God sent down fire from heaven and consumed the sacrifice. It's one of those great Sunday school stories that gets your blood pumping. It gets you excited about what God is able to do. And Elijah slays the prophets of Baal and it seems like everything is finally going to turn around. Finally, Israel is going to follow after God. And then we start chapter 19. And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done. Also how he had executed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, so let the gods do to me. And more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time. And when he saw that, he arose and ran for his life. and went to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servants there. But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under the broom tree, and he prayed that he might die, and said, it is enough. Now, Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers. And here we see Elijah's faith stumble. And we can hardly blame the man. But indeed, God challenged him and exhorted him and brought him back to the task because his work was not yet done. Likewise, in 1 Kings 22 verses 13 through 18, one of my favorite passages of scripture, the passage after which my son is named, where we encounter the prophet Micaiah, the one man in all of Israel who tells the truth to Ahab. the one man who declares that indeed Ahab will perish in battle, and the great reward that Micaiah should receive for being the one man who is bold enough to declare the truth. And we see that Micaiah is cast into jail until such time as Ahab returns victorious. And of course, Ahab goes out and perishes in battle, presumably leaving Micaiah to spend the rest of his life imprisoned for his faithfulness to God. What great faith this required. And indeed, tradition tells us that the prophet Isaiah, for all of the beauty and the eloquence of his letter, of his prophecy to the children of Israel, his faithfulness to the task that God set before him, would end in his being sawed in half, of being a martyr for the proclamation of truth. But these men were called to rebuke the children of Israel. And it was a rebuke that was unto exhortation. An exhortation to repent. And this task required great faith. Because they had to trust in God's justice, but also in God's mercy. In the rare instance that there were those who indeed turned at the rebuke, who indeed repented at that call. These men had to trust in not only God's justice, but also in God's mercy and grace that he is extending to these people. All under God's sovereignty that he will do whatsoever he wills. Indeed, this is where we see Jonah stumble. where he saw the turning of the Ninevites, where he wanted to see the condemnation of God come down upon them. But all of this labor of rebuke and exhortation was to show man's inability to fulfill the law. All of this rebuke was to show that man could not earn his own salvation, that every man indeed fell short of the glory of God. And this was necessary and so much of the prophet's work was dedicated to this because they had to see their need for a savior. Because the second task of the prophet was to prophesy Christ. Just as these men personified the moral law, They personified the gospel. In conjunction with that sacrificial law, the labor of the priests and the sacrificing of animals and the shedding of blood, they personified and foreshadowed Christ to the people of Israel. By faith, these men preached the gospel. Even though it was in shadow, they preached the call to repentance and faith. They called for repentance and faith from the children of Israel. And by faith, they prophesied Christ himself. In Luke 24, 27, we see the account of the sermon on the road to Emmaus. And we see Christ expositing the scriptures to those men. And it says that he began with Moses and the prophets. and showed them Christ in the Old Testament. In Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14, I'm gonna move quickly through a large number of passages here. Feel free to write these down if you want to look at them later. But I'm gonna move fairly quickly here. In Isaiah chapter 7 and verse 14, it says, therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. and you shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. In Isaiah chapter nine and verse six, for unto us a son is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. In Isaiah 53, verses one through 12, we see that beautiful narrative of the suffering servant, In Daniel chapter 7, verses 13 through 14. It says, I was watching in the night visions and behold, one like the son of man coming with the clouds of heaven, he came to the ancient of days and they brought him near before him. Then to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away in his kingdom, the one which shall not be destroyed. In Hosea chapter one and verse seven, It says, yet I will have mercy on the house of Judah. I will save them by the Lord their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor battle, by horses or horsemen. I will save them by the Lord their God. This is a prophecy about the incarnation of Christ. Moving forward into Micah chapter five and verse two. It says, but you Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me the one to be the ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from old, from everlasting. In Zechariah chapter six, verses 12 through 13, it says, then speak to him saying, thus says the Lord of hosts saying, behold, the man whose name is the branch. From his place he shall branch out and he shall build the temple of the Lord. Yes, he shall build the temple of the Lord. He shall bear the glory and shall sit and rule on his throne. So he shall be a priest on his throne and the council of peace shall be between them both. Then in chapter nine and verse nine, rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you. He is just and having salvation lowly. and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey. And then in chapter 12 and verse 10, this is the last one we'll read this morning. And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplication. Then they will look on me whom they have pierced. Yes, they will mourn for him as one mourns for his only son and grieve for him as one grieves for a firstborn. And there are countless other passages that we could pull out of the prophets. Jeremiah 31 is an entire chapter that points to the beauty of Christ and the covenant of grace that would be established in him. We could spend a great deal of time simply tracing the prophecies of Christ through David's Psalms. And we could look at the way in which Nathan proclaimed to David, Nathan as a prophet declaring the covenant that God was establishing with David that was truly in and of itself a prophecy of Christ. By faith, the prophets declared Christ and the gospel of salvation for sinners. So we come finally to the application. In our time, we do not have a separate prophetic office, but rather that office is now largely fulfilled by the ministry of the word. I actually have a book in my office that I, even to this day, I take a double take when I see the title of it. It's called The Art of Prophesying, and it's a book on preaching. Because while we do not in an extraordinary way get called up into heaven, ministers of the word are no longer called up into the throne room of God and given predictive aspects. We are the ones who are called specifically to declare the truth of God as it is revealed in scripture. And we as God's people must test what is preached against the scriptures. And we must be sure that ministers of the word do not lead us away from God. Just as Moses, under God's calling, made that exhortation to the children of Israel, so it applies to us. If a man calls himself a minister of the word and he preaches that which leads us away from the scriptures, then he is not of God. But yet we must carefully heed those words. that are proclaimed by God's servant of rebuke, of exhortation, and of the call to faith in Christ. And even though there is a specific office that is dedicated unto that work, we are all of us called to speak truth. We are even called on occasion to rebuke and to exhort, but we are to do it in humility and love. It's easy to read through the Old Testament prophets and simply see them as these harbingers of doom, the prophet of doom. As they come and they declare these weighty words, but we must remember the courier. You must remember the burden that these tasks of this task that was placed upon these men and that these men first were humbled. Like Isaiah, we must be first humbled and instructed in order to go out and faithfully share the word of God. We need faith to do this. We need faith and this is the very reason that we must pray without ceasing. And we must never proclaim the law. the rebuke and the exhortation without the gospel. It must always be accompanied with the promises of God by which sinners are saved. But finally, and most importantly, I want each of us to hear the truths of the prophets. Today, let us heed again the words of prophets that were spoken so long ago. and ask of ourselves, as I ask you, what idols have you placed on the throne of your heart? I'm confident that none of you here worship the bales of the Old Testament world, that you have not set up Asherah. But what are the idols that you carry on the throne of your heart? Do you worship wealth? Or is it your own strength? Is it your family? Or the acceptance of other men? Is it pornography? Or is it your own wisdom that you've set up on the throne of your heart? Cast down your idols today. Examine your heart, especially as we prepare to come to the Lord's table, cast down the idols of your heart and slay them like the prophets of Baal with great prejudice. Cry out in repentance and beg forgiveness of your sins, repent of your lies and of your adulteries, repent of your covetousness and of all your other sins. We are men and women of unclean lips. And we have need to be purged by the coals of the altar. But having done this, this hard work of repentance, come to Christ. Come in faith, poor and naked before God, before Christ and proclaim love. Proclaim faith. Proclaim trust and joy in your God. Declare your faith and cling to the cross. Let's come before the Lord in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for this, your day. We thank you for the beauty of your gospel, Lord. We thank you for the faithfulness of your prophets, the faith that you grant in them. for so burdensome a task. Lord, we ask that you would grant us this same faith, the same courage, the same boldness, the same confidence that you, the judge of heaven and earth, will do right. Lord, draw our hearts near to you. Lord, Reveal our sins to us. Rebuke us. That we might repent of those sins. That we might cast down the idols of our hearts. And that we might come to you unburdened and rejoicing in your grace, in your mercy and in your love, Lord, in the satisfaction of justice of Christ's dying on the cross and absorbing the wrath that was due to us. Lord, let us recall that. And with gravity and joy mingled, come to your table. Lord, we repent. We confess that we are sinners. We confess that we need more of your grace. That we have more conforming to be done. Lord, you must increase and we must decrease. Thank you for all that you have done in us. Lord, we believe help our unbelief. And Lord, after we have labored in rejoicing, after we have labored in repenting and declaring our faith, Lord, grant us grace in this, your table, so that when we go out from this place, we would have that joy of our salvation renewed. We would go out humbled and yet joyous into the world to speak truth into the lives of those whom you place in our path. Lord, please give us wisdom, words and opportunity to declare the gospel to those whom we love. These things we pray in the name of your son, our beloved savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.