We read tonight Psalm 66. The call to worship was in verses 8 and 9. You will recognize that. And our text is verse 16. Psalm 66. Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands. Sing forth the honor of his name. Make his praise glorious. Say unto God, how terrible art thou in thy works. Through the greatness of thy power shall thine enemies submit themselves unto thee. All the earth shall worship thee and shall sing unto thee. They shall sing to thy name. Come and see the works of God. He is terrible in His doing toward the children of men. And if I may pause here a moment, that's the second time that word terrible is used here in verse 3. How terrible art thou in thy works. And here, He is terrible in His doings. You must not think that that word terrible means evil, bad. Although for the wicked, God's works are terrifying. The reference for us here and the emphasis is that God's works are such that they fill us with awe. Awe. Verse six, he turned the sea into dry land. They went through the flood on foot. There did we rejoice in him. He ruleth by His power forever. His eyes behold the nations. Let not the rebellious exalt themselves. O bless our God, ye people, and make the voice of His praise to be heard, which holdeth our soul in life, and suffereth not our feet to be moved. For thou, O God, hast proved us, thou hast tried us, as silver is tried. Thou broughtest us into the net. Thou laidst affliction upon our loins. Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads. We went through fire and through water. But Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place. I will go into thy house with burned offerings. I will pay thee my vows, which my lips have uttered, and my mouth has spoken when I was in trouble. I will offer unto thee burnt sacrifices of fatlings with the incense of rams. I will offer bullocks with goats. Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul. I cried unto him with my mouth, and he was extolled with my tongue. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me, but verily God hath heard me. He hath attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God, which hath not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me." Our text is verse 16. Come and hear all ye that fear God, and I will declare what He hath done for my soul. Let's pray. Father, bless Thy Word. Make it a power tonight to work faith in those who are yet unbelieving, but especially work faith in us who are believing, that it may, our faith, be strengthened, that our love for Thee may increase, and our ability to worship and praise Thee may grow, so that our praise indeed is glorious. For Jesus' sake, amen. this text, men, is appropriate for your confession of faith in a way that might be a little bit surprising. Because what you just did in front of the whole congregation when you said, yes, was give a personal testimony. That your soul is saved. That's what you did in that little word, yes. And what we have in our text is a personal testimony. of a saved soul, a personal witness of what God had done for him. We're sometimes nervous about personal testimonies and personal witnessing. We imagine that that's Arminian maybe, Baptist probably, certainly not Reformed, and for sure you would not hear a personal testimony in a Protestant Reformed church. And yet that's wrong thinking, isn't it? Because tonight you men just gave, in your confession of faith, a personal testimony. That's what David did here. It's found in verse 16 of Psalm 66 that begins, not with a personal testimony, but with a general testimony. And if you look at the Psalm with me, you'll see, as we march through just for a moment, the first part of Psalm 66, where the psalmist says, Let's praise God. Let's praise God with singing. And let's make His praise glorious because of what God has done for us. Us. And that's the breadth of Psalm 66, at the beginning. And what God has done for us is marvelous and fills us with awe so that we look at God's works and we say, He's an awesome God. What he did first, David says, and we'll assume that David is the author of the psalm, that we don't know that for sure. What God did first is, now look, reach down his hands and part the Red Sea so that his people could go through and head home. And that's a marvelous work. That's a work that the enemies of God were terrified of, so that they would say, that God is terrible, and He's terrifying, and we are terrified of Him. But you and we together say, He's an awesome God. What a marvelous God He is. And then Psalm 66 goes on to say, Come and see all of the works of God. He not only turned the sea into dry land so that they went through the flood on foot, but seven, eight, nine, He does everything good. And everything He does is something that fills us with awe. Sometimes He causes the enemy to ride over our head, and we don't like to think about those things. Sometimes He brings us through the fire and through the flood, and we don't ask to go there. but always our God brings us out the other side into what the Psalm says, a wealthy place. Verse 12, always He does. God does marvelous works for us. And that's what makes our praise glorious when we remember what He does for us. And then the Psalmist gets narrower It doesn't say, now come and I want you to see what God has done for us. He says, now come, gather around me, and I want you to hear what God has done for me. And that's personal. And that He makes a personal testimony. that his soul has been saved. You recognize that, don't you? Maybe not in the language of the King James here, but certainly in the language of the Psalter. Come and hear, all ye that fear the Lord, while I with grateful heart record what God has done for me. I cried to Him in deep distress, and now His wondrous grace I bless, for He has set me free." That's the third stanza of 175 that we're going to be singing at the end of the worship service this evening. That's personal. That's a personal testimony. That's a pretty public personal testimony. And we Protestant Reformed people must not be afraid, I'll talk more about that in the course of the sermon, we must not be afraid of giving personal witnesses of what God has done for us. So let me explain this passage more carefully under the theme, the personal testimony of the saved soul. And see in the first place, testimony of what? Secondly, testimony to whom? And thirdly, testimony why? Now the first two points come from the text explicitly. What He testifies is right there in the text. To whom He testifies. Other God fears is right there in the text. But why is not so explicit, and I'll explain that when we come to that. Testimony what? Testimony to whom? And testimony why? In order so that we can focus very carefully and clearly on what he testifies in our text, I want to isolate what he testifies in our text from what he doesn't testify in our text. And that will help us see more carefully what verse 66 teaches. David is not here, and the introduction of the sermon made that clear, testifying what God did for us. For the church, down through the ages, He had done that already, now He's going to do something different. But notice that it is important for us to make a good testimony of the wonderful works that God has done for us together. And you men who make confession of faith ought to do that. Start way back in the beginning, in creation, what God did. look at and then testify of what God did through all of the Old Testament into the New Testament. And so you've learned church history, and you are able to say that you are a part of a grand plan of God to save His church, and you are a part of that church. But that's not what this text is having us confess. In the second place, David is not confessing what God had done for his body. Although David could have made a good confession of that too. David was wealthy. David was healthy. He was young. He was strong. He had everything that he needed. God provided that for him. And so we can make that confession too. We're rich. Most of us are healthy. We have possessions abundantly. And we ought to be able to say that too, and thank God for that too, and make His praise glorious for that as well. But that's not either what David is doing in our text. Third, David is not saying what he had done, by the grace of God, for God's kingdom. Although he could have done that, and would have been permitted to do that, and in fact, in one particular time in his life he did that. He said, when I was a boy, do you know that I took a lion by the beard with one hand and with the other hand slew that lion? And I did the very same thing for a bear. I slew a bear. And he made that testimony of what he did by the grace and strength of God to Saul when David wanted to kill Goliath. And Saul said, you're never going to do that. And David said, but by the grace of God, I did this and that, and I'm not afraid to face that man. And then with the first shot out of his slingshot, he killed Goliath and later on was able to testify probably to his children and grandchildren what by the grace of God He did there, and He could have added to that what He did when the Jebusites needed to be dislodged from Jerusalem, and no one could do it. He, with His soldiers, did that. And so, it's not wrong for us at times to recognize and say things about what we do. Not often. By the grace of God. We do many things. At your age, men, you've not done much yet actively. Look at your fathers and your mothers and your teachers and what they've done and pray that by the grace of God, you will be able to do that too. And then you may speak carefully, humbly, once in a while about that, but that's not our text either. And in the fourth place, certainly David did not say what he had done for his own soul. That's completely off limits here. David was no Arminian. David was a Calvinist, and he knew that salvation was freely of grace, all of God, and not on account of him. And so we are not asking these men, or any of us, to say what we did, perhaps even in conjunction with God. I did my part, God did His part, and together my salvation was accomplished. Not at all. Now look at the text. David says, I want you to know what God alone did for my soul. For inside me He saved my soul and my spirit. He redeemed me from destruction. He gave me full and complete salvation. Look at the text and see how that comes from the text. Watch how David works that out. First of all, when in verse 14 he becomes personal, 13, he had already used the personal pronoun, I, but in 14, he says, I was in trouble. That's where we start with salvation. I was in trouble, David said. Secondly, the trouble that I was in was such that I could not deliver myself from that trouble. And that's why he speaks in the end of the psalm of God's mercy. Mercy is the gift of God of pity and power to deliver those who are in misery and cannot deliver themselves from their misery. That's mercy. God looked down upon David, saw David in such a state that David was helpless and hopeless, and God came to deliver him. Third, the trouble that David was in was the trouble of his sin. Now that ought to be obvious to us, but that comes out of the text too. He says in verse 18 that iniquity was his problem. And there we need to be more careful and patient in explaining that. What was this trouble? that David was in, from which he could not extract himself and deliver himself. It was the trouble of his sin. Now we could go on and on and on about David's sin, but just think what these men have learned in catechism and what we have been taught from the Scripture about sin, actual sin, original sin. the guilt of sin, the pollution of sin, the enslavement of sin, the addiction of sin, sins of omission and sins of commission, violating God's law, breaking God's covenant, not keeping oaths that God's people make, offending God, the good, gracious, kind God who gives us a place in His covenant and a seat around His table. That's what sin is. That's the problem that David had and the trouble that he could not deliver himself from. I, David says, have sinned against thy grace and provoked thee to thy face. David understood the need of his soul, and God saved his soul. And that's the fourth step in David's reasoning. Trouble? Impossible trouble. the trouble of sin, and the deliverance by the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus the Christ. That ought to be obvious to anyone who reads this psalm where he makes the transition in verse 13 from us to I. I will go into thy house with burnt offerings. And then again in verse 15, sacrifices of fatlings, incense of rams I will offer, bullocks and goats. And what David was doing in Old Testament language was saying, I would like you to come, and though I would not be permitted to do that, I would like you to picture me standing with my hand on the altar. And I want you to know that what God did for my soul is right there. There was a burnt offering that was made for me in picture, but I understand that that burnt offering pictured the One to come who is called the Messiah, the Anointed One, and my soul's salvation is rooted in and grounded in that one sacrifice of a substitute. for me. The wrath of God that ought to have come down upon me came down upon that sacrifice, and now I know I'm free. That's what God did for my soul," David says. That's easily translatable into New Testament language, isn't it? And what these young men this evening, and what all of us confess as our personal testimony of God's good dealings with us, is that very thing. We're in trouble. We're in deep, deep trouble. And we're in such trouble that we can't deliver ourselves because there is no personal rescue of ourselves from the guilt and shame of sin, of omission and commission, the enslavement of sin, the offense of sin, the filth of sin, the power of sin. There's no possibility of me or you doing anything to deliver ourselves. And what we in the New Testament say is like what David said, I'm not permitted to do this and I'm not going to do this, but you may imagine me in my mind doing it. I stand with my hand, not on the altar of burned offering, but on the wood of the cross where hanged my Savior. There's mercy for me who are miserable. There's salvation for my soul who cannot redeem myself. There's the help and the hope that I need. It's all Christ. The confession we make about what God does for us is very simple. One word, Christ. That's the word David used too. He didn't say it in Greek, that's Christ. He said it in Hebrew, that's Messiah. But it's the very same thing, my hope is in the Messiah, said David. And we say in the Greek language, my hope is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I don't have any hope apart from that. Christ for me, I'm not going to die because he died in my place. Christ in me, I live. And the life I live now, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who gave me, gave Himself for me. For me, in me, with me. Christ is everything for me. He's my friend. He's my bridegroom. He's my companion. He's a friend that sticks closer to me than a brother. It's all Christ. You want to know one word of testimony that we make? Jesus Christ. And when I have Christ, I'm satisfied. When I am filled with Christ, I'm full. When I have Him, I'm happy. When I have Him, I'm at peace. That's the testimony that you men make, and that's the testimony that I make. And though we've gone on for a little while about that, we could go on and on more. And I say that not because I could as a preacher, but because I should as a faithful expositor of the text, because the word in the text, declare, David says, come sit around me, I want to declare to you what God did for me, has two dimensions that allow us to go on and on. And one of the dimensions is that that word means recount one element at a time. from the beginning all the way to the end. One, two, three, four, five, six, and every element. And then the other dimension of this word is that it's a continuous action verb. Keep on going, keep on going. You know people who talk and keep on going." Well, we smile at that once in a while, and maybe the smile isn't so much of a smile as a disgust, but when the child of God says what God has done for His soul, He's able to keep on going. and list one thing after another. And the text gives us opportunity to do that. God caused men right over our heads. He put us through fire and through water, but he brought us out into a wealthy place. And the whole reality of suffering in the Christian life, we could talk about that, what God does for us in the Lord Jesus Christ. this is what your confession of faith is, and catechism prepared you for that. Now, I'm going to make a point of catechism, and I'm very thankful for that, that I was privileged in our vacancy to teach you men for the past three and a half, and now going on four years, teach you catechism. But you had others who taught you catechism too. We have many catechism teachers. Here's the point. Your confession of faith is the result of catechism preparing you to say what God has done for you. and your confession of faith is a testimony of what God has done for you. Let me remind you of catechism for a moment. You don't remember that far back, but a little boy in the front maybe in first grade does, or a little girl in first grade does. The very first question of the very first book asks the children, who is your creator? And the answer, that little boy or girl says, is God. It's all about what God has done. And then the next question, did God create all things? And the little boy or girl says, yes, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. He learns about God. How do we know about this creation that first grader is asked? And that first grader says, God tells us about it in His Bible. That's where catechism begins. It's all about what God has done. And here is where catechism comes close to its conclusion in the Essentials book, where the very first question in that book asks you, what is, and that's understood to you, what is above all things most precious? If someone asked you that question, what would you say? For you, what is above all things most precious? And the answer in that book is the knowledge of the true God through Jesus Christ. There's nothing more precious to me than that. And that's the first question of the last book. And then the last lesson of that last book in our catechism curriculum asks, what is the blessedness of the new heaven and the new earth? And I'll paraphrase it, to live with God. Catechism prepares you to make this confession of faith. First, second, third grade, fourth and fifth grade, sixth and seventh grade, all history, eighth and ninth grade, the Heidelberg Catechism, tenth and eleventh grade, essentials of Reformed doctrine. And now you are a year or two past that, and you are ready because you have been taught how to say Come here, I want you to know what God has done for my soul. And if you have time, I'll speak for quite a while. God did great things for you. You see, catechism doesn't prepare you merely to say what God has done for the church. Although that's part of catechism instruction. That's one dimension of it. It's not the first part and then the last part of catechism is what He's done for you. But one dimension of catechism instruction is what God has done for us. And running through all of that instruction is instruction for all of us to say what God has done for me. I am a part of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ which God has redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything, and at the center of our catechism instruction, is Christ. Why do you have a place in the church? Why do you believe? Because in eternity, God united you to the Lord Jesus Christ. Why do you have the assurance that when you go before the judge in the judgment day, you're not going to be condemned? You say, Christ, Why do you have strength to bear your burdens and obey the commandments and live faithfully in a wicked, wicked world? And the same answer you give Christ and you expand on it. Election, regeneration, justification, sanctification, preservation, and all of the doctrines of the scripture you learn in catechism so that you could come here tonight and say, this is what God did for me, for me. Which explains why in the last couple of years in those catechism classes, we sing always before catechism class begins, or as the beginning of the class, we sang those four Psalter numbers, 34, 310, 312, and 426. I'm helping you remember those now by scratching your memory so you don't forget. 34, 310, 312, and 426, in which all of us say, A very simple thing, I love the Lord. Catechism is not just for our minds. Catechism is done with the intent and the prayer that what is in our minds goes down into our hearts. That's what confession of faith is. You must not ever imagine that anyone is permitted in this congregation to confess merely a historical faith. or a miraculous faith, or a temporary faith. And you who are in essentials know that language. Those are counterfeit faiths. These men did not confess historical faith. That is, I have no problem believing what the Bible teaches. I just don't know if it's true for me. That's historical faith. That's not true faith. And there's a long story in the history of Reformed churches that there was a time and an area in Reformed churches where consistories permitted young men and young women to make a confession of historical faith. I believe what the Bible teaches. I don't deny anything I read in here. I just don't know whether it's applicable to me. And in some of those churches, they were permitted to come to the Lord's table confessing historical faith, not true faith. And in other of those churches, they were told, you made a good confession, but you have to wait to come to the Lord's table until you make another confession when you are sure that what God did for us, He did for you. And all of that is wrong. And the right practice in the church is in the consistory room to ask these young men and other young women, Not only the intellectual questions about the attributes of God and the works of God and the salvation through Jesus Christ, do you understand that? That's all a part of it. But no confession of faith may ever be approved until the consistory asks, do you believe and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior? But you learn that too, and that's not surprising either, because in eighth grade already, you were asked, what is true faith? And you said, it's not only a certain knowledge of all that God revealed to us in His Word, but it's an assured confidence that not only to others, but to me also. are freely given merely of grace for the sake of Christ's righteousness and everlasting salvation. Faith is not only knowledge, it's confidence that it belongs to me." Catechism prepares you for that. For this, we're gathered with all of the people of God, your friends, your families, your relatives, you say, Please join us. I want, you men said, I want you all to hear me make a personal testimony of what God did for me. You didn't invite your workmates probably, though if they're here, we're very glad that they're here, but you invited your friends from school and churches, your cousins and family members who are believers with you. You see, that's what David did here. He didn't say, I want to send an invitation down to Egypt, to the south, the Philistines off to the west, the Syrians up north, and the Moabites off to the east. He didn't do that. He said, I want you who are God-fearers to come because you are going to understand what I have to say. Now, that's not to say that a personal testimony of what God has done for us to non-Christians is inappropriate. We ought to make that confession. Jesus said, let your light shine before men, Matthew 5.16. Paul picked up on that and said in Colossians 4 verses 5 and 6, as you stand in the world, face outward toward non-Christians, those who are outside. and be ready to speak and be willing to testify to those who are outside. And so Peter said the same thing, be ready to give an answer to those who ask you, what in the world is the hope that's in you? They don't understand it. You need to explain it to them. And we need to make that kind of confession too, by our words and by our deeds, not just by our lives, but by our testimony. If we have a struggle telling other Christians what our soul's blessings are, we have a difficulty saying to other non-Christians what our soul's blessings are, but we ought to pray for opportunities in the gym, in the airplane with somebody sitting next to us, our neighbor across the way. We want to say to them what God has done for us, but that's not this text either. This text's teaching is that you and I say to fellow God-fearers, there's that word again, terrible. appears here, all you that fear God." Same word, a little bit different form, same idea. Not those of you who are terrified of God, but those of you who stand in awe of God because of what He's done for you. I want you to listen, and I want you to hear what God has done for me. You will understand it. Notice a couple of things about this here. David is saying, come. He didn't wait for an invitation. He created an opportunity. Let that sink in for a moment. He initiated this personal witness. Notice in the second place, David is not speaking here as an office bearer, but as a common member. You mustn't imagine that David is saying, only the office bearers may do this. David is giving this as a testimony and an example to all of us. And then in the third place, what he's doing is creating an atmosphere where all the people of God are comfortable in doing this. comfortable doing this, so that, so that, and let this go through the whole of the sermon, so that our praise may be more glorious and our song of rejoicing may be louder. David is creating an atmosphere as a mature Christian where others are comfortable in doing just what he did. And that's applicable to us, isn't it? It's not easy to do that. And we mustn't expect people to come up here and do that. In fact, we might object to someone coming up here and doing that. I said at the very beginning that we're nervous about personal witnessing. And maybe rightly so. And maybe rightly so because in the past, this personal testimony went astray. Maybe it went astray because those who wanted to give that personal testimony came up here and the minister sat down there and you didn't hear a sermon. You only heard people talking about what God had done for them. Not bad to hear what God's people have to say about what God has done for them, but not at the expense of the preaching. Or it may be that these personal testimonies went out of bounds when each story You ought to hear what God did for me." Got more exciting and more dramatic until most of the people said, I don't have a story like that, and so I'm not going to speak. Or maybe they went out of bounds when the only personal testimony that was given was given by somebody who had an experience like Saul. On the way to Damascus, he was an unbeliever. At one moment in his life, with a lightning bolt, he became a believer and said, before that day, I hated God and the church. And after that day, I loved God and loved His church. And unless you have a story like that, your story probably isn't worth telling. Now, some of God's people have those stories. Some of us have had that experience that at one point in our lives, God suddenly dramatically turned us. And I thank God for any story like that. We must. But most of us don't have those stories. But those are the reasons that personal testimonies often were looked askance at and rejected, but that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Let's bring the baby back in, which is our calling to speak to others about what God has done for us. You don't need to do that in a big group to start. Just do that at home. Dads, when you get home from work, And you speak to your wife, if God gave you a wife and you don't even have children yet, and you say, honey, I want you to know what God did for me today. It doesn't have to be a big story. It doesn't need to be dramatic. Just something as simple as He gave me strength to do my work faithfully. I faced some temptations. Here's what they were, and by the grace of God, I didn't succumb to them, I worked." Praise God with me, will you? Let's make His praise glorious, honey. And then she, comfortable by His testimony to her, says, and this is what God did for me. And then when God gives children, those children learn to hear dad and mom speaking about what God has done for them. And dad goes off to work and mom says to the little boys and the little girls, do you know what God has done for us and how good God is? And whatever the circumstances may be, spell out for those children so that those children grow up in homes comfortable saying what God has done for me. And then maybe when you get to Bible study, Young People's Society, or Adult Bible Society, you'll be able to do, after you've asked the question and answered it, what does this text mean? Say, what does this text mean for me? How does it speak to me and give a testimony about how God is good to me? And then maybe even after church on a Sunday evening like tonight, we're willing and able to talk about something other than the hunting trip, or the ball game, or the busyness at the mall yesterday, something other than those mundane things, not bad in themselves, but on the Lord's Day, especially on the Lord's Day, speak of the good things God has done for us. I wonder sometimes whether we're even permitted to speak to a non-Christian about what God has done for us if never before we have said to Christians what God has done for us. Do we have the right to speak to them if we've never spoken to each other? Can we? Do we have anything to say? How will we frame it if we've never spoken to each other and we try to speak to them? People of God, we have a lot of humbling of ourselves to do with regard to our strength as Christians, and confess great weakness and pray for growth that we may be able to do this, this. And if you ask the question why, now we come to the third point, why? I'm not asking that question why in the sense of what are you aiming at? We've already answered that. What we're aiming at is that our praise of God may be more glorious and our songs of thanksgiving to God may be louder. That's what we're aiming at. But now I'm asking why in the sense of what will drive us to do this? What fuels me to speak when otherwise my tongue is silent about God? What is it? Is it perhaps that David did this because there was a command to do it? You don't read anything like that in the psalm. Now, David's example to us becomes a mandate for us. Some mandates for us come by commands. But some mandates come to us by the example of others, and that's one of them here. David's example becomes a mandate for us. Do that. Live that way. Make those kinds of confessions. And so we're called to obey. Jesus makes that mandate clear in the New Testament. Confess me. If you deny me, I deny you. Let your light shine. There are all kinds of commands in the New Testament, but that's not what we find in the text here. Is it perhaps that David makes this confession because it's simply in the nature of being a believer? that if you would ask David why, he would say, that's just what we are as believers. Something like you would ask a bird. If you could speak to a bird, bird, why do you fly? He would say, because I'm a bird. That's the way God made me. And if you would ask a deer, why do you leap, deer? He would say, because I'm a deer, and that's what God made me to do. And if you would ask a lion, why do you roar? The lion would say, because he made me to roar as a lion. And so you ask a Christian, why do you testify? And the Christian says, that's just the way God made me. It's in me. Well, it isn't in me, naturally. Naturally, what's in me is to be silent, not to speak. My human nature doesn't want to say a word. Now my second nature makes me able and willing Our new man in the Lord Jesus Christ makes me so, I may say, that's what I am. God made me a priest to devote myself to God, a king to rule in behalf of God, and a prophet to speak. Why do I speak? Because God made me a prophet, and there's something to that too. And yet, the real reason that David wants others to hear what God has done for him is simply that God's goodness to him was so great, and His grace to him was so rich and free, that David says, you couldn't stop me from speaking. I want you to know how good God has been to me. So great was the grace of God in him that he wanted to speak." God's grace made him willing in the day of God's power. And that's the difference between a Christian and a bird. A bird probably couldn't explain why he flies. He does it automatically. A deer couldn't explain why he leaps except out of fear of a hunter. And a lion roars simply because he's hungry and he needs to get another meal. He couldn't explain it. They're brute beasts. But we're not brute beasts. And if you want me to explain why I speak, I might say because he commands me. And I might say because it's in-created in me, in my second nature, But if you ask me what's the deepest reason why I want to tell you what God did for me, it's that His goodness to me is so great, I can't be stopped in speaking. And that makes me very ashamed. And I trust it does you too. You can't be stopped is not the question. The question is, will we start? And we will start insofar as we think about and meditate on the good things that God has done for us. We don't start perhaps because we're talking about the ballgame and thinking and meditating upon the hunting trip, or the shopping excursion, or the house we want to buy, or the kitchen we need to remodel. We're thinking about those things, speaking about those things. What is it that we think about and what is it that we speak about? Those go together. The young people have made a good beginning tonight with that little word, yes. Yes. Behind that little word, yes, was a longer word in the consistory room explaining what you believe and what's in your heart now. Don't put a period after that yes. Put a comma and an ellipsis so that you keep on speaking and you keep on speaking. And then the rest of us, let's go home tonight and let's be sure that there's one thing we don't do. And I'm not talking about speaking of the ball game or the hunting trip or the shopping excursion. Of course, we're not going to talk about that. But when your spiritual don't either do this, ask the question, why don't we speak? Why is it that we're silent? Leave that for another time. Go home tonight and say to your spouse, to your parents, to your brother, to your friends, to your children, what God has done for you. Come here, all ye that fear the Lord, while I with grateful heart record what God has done for me. I cried to him in deep distress, and now his wondrous grace I bless. He set me free. Amen. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we are thankful tonight for thy word. but especially thankful for the work of grace in us. And we also are sorry for our failures to speak as we ought to speak about thy wonders. Lord, may we praise thee. May we sing unto thee. And may our praise be glorious because of the great work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Forgive us. in His blood and sanctify us by His Spirit and work in us hope that we'll never be put to shame. For Jesus' sake we pray, amen.