long time to develop before you look at someone and say, this is my dear friend in Christ, though is not quite different from that. because I have to tell you that just the warmth and the clear love for Christ that you can actually feel in this place, I feel right at home. I feel as if I've been here not just once, and this is the first time ever being even on this road, much less this church, and meeting any of you that I've met. It's the first time I've met any of you. I feel much brother to all of you and one in Christ with you. The warmth in this place is very obvious. I think of this, actually, as kind of a Nehemiah 8 church. What I mean by that is you can feel, you really can feel up here the anxiousness. that you have for the word. So when Nehemiah ate, when they told Ezra, bring out the word, you almost hear them shouting, bring out the word. We want to hear what God says. You can kind of feel that spirit here. And as I was telling some of the men, your order of worship is very, very much like mine at Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church. Your seating, the length of service, just everything here is so similar. I feel very much at home, but also the warmth and I think friendships that were made quickly but will be very long term, God willing. I will, before I read my scripture for this evening, tell you that, God willing, I'll be able to fulfill that great actor Arnold Schwarzenegger's word in that fine movie Terminator when he said, I'll be back. which is the most senseless thing ever said in all moviedom, because here's the Terminator who doesn't need a car to break through the wall, but he goes and gets a car to break through the wall. Be that as it may, I do hope to come back here sometime when your Pastor Merv is here. I met him on the phone. We connected ear to ear. I would like to see him and worship with you and hear him. So my plan, and God willing, his plan, is for me to be back here sometime in the next couple of months as I'm able. With that said, I know you just stood for the reading of God's word. My reading this evening is rather short, so please stand again for the reading of God's word in Psalm number 124. Psalm 124, the word of God says, If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, let Israel now say, if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when people rose up against us, they would have swallowed us up alive, when their angels once kindled against us. Then the flood would have swept us away. The torrent would have gone over us. Then over us would have gone the raging waters. Blessed be the Lord who has not given us as prey to their teeth. We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers. The snare is broken, and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. God bless the reading and now the proclamation of his word. Please be seated. I've been asked before why, as a guest pastor, I so often, and even in my church as the home pastor, go to the Psalms for one-off sermons. In other words, to come in and do a sermon that is not part of a series. So you don't need three series before to understand where we're going, and we don't need to complete it with two series or two sermons afterwards. The Psalms do tend to lend themselves to a standalone sermon. And to be honest, in the Psalms, we don't often find doctrines where you'll step on the home pastor's toes. Some of the controversial areas, though there are doctrines in the Psalms, they're usually those that are more agreeable. The other reason I like to go to the Psalms is because And this is not just me, because I have some genius insight. This is very common for many of us. But I just find it easy to find Jesus in the Psalms. And he told them and the disciples in Luke 24 that the Psalms are all about him, with other parts of the Bible, of course. But the Psalms portray Jesus Christ. And they portray so many aspects of him. And in Psalm 124, what jumps out of the pages is this Jesus Christ who is with us. and on our side, our sympathetic high priest, as I said this morning, who's gone through what we've gone through, who has faced what we face, yet without sin and coming with a sympathy. Understand also that God, as it were, learned what it is to face these temptations, to be in the frail flesh, which he decreed for us through Jesus Christ. God wasn't human until God became flesh in him. In Psalm 124, we have this wonderful hymn of confidence of the Lord being on our side. You see, there's a question that many of us have asked, and I think it's a question that is implicit in the opening words of this psalm. There's this question, more than a mere query, it's more than just a thing I need to know that's in view, it's the anguished cry of a wounded heart. from deep within your spirit wells up this cry. It stirs up your spirit until there's agony in your soul, and your bosom fairly bursts with this almost primal scream. Your lips can't hold it back, and all this is churning deep within you, and it demands to be released. And here's your question. And I wonder if you've ever asked this, perhaps within yourself, not verbalized, and maybe to a loved one, to a pastor. But here's what comes bursting out of us. Where was God? Where was God? Have you ever cried this out? Have you ever been in a situation where you look back upon it and you say, where was God? Where was God? With a third emphasis, where was God? Have you ever cried this out? Have you ever thought to cry this out? I mean, sometimes it flows with tears. Sometimes it's more of this scream, where was God? Sometimes your voice plays no part, but the troubled breast cries out the same, pleading for the answer of where was God? And you can't even verbalize it. You can't even tell a loved one or a pastor or a close brother or sister that this question is churning up within you. You don't want to admit it because the hurt is so deep. When you look back and say this, but where? This happened. Where was? I was hurt. Where was God? Where was the doctor? Or where was God, excuse me, where was God when the doctor told us that her cancer was incurable? When you came to work and you found that your desk was locked and the last remnant of your decades of work was enshrined in a piece of pink paper. Where was God when the bank failed and your savings vanished? In the sin-cursed world, this list could go on and on and on. And we all know that. You know how hard this world can be. We've all lived in this world. Within the tribulations that we live through, these hard times that we see. meant for our good because God means it's only good and I dispense with the idea of a frowning providence. Have you ever heard this? Brethren, there's no frowning providence from God upon those who are in Christ Jesus because he means everything that happens for your good. There's nothing he's not working that is for your good to form you into the image of Christ, which no matter how hard it is to get there is for our good. And yet, we do look back and we say, well, God, this happened, that happened. I've got this disease. These things occurred. Where were you who promised to never leave me or forsake me? Have you ever felt like this? Have you ever had this kind of anguish when something comes up? You know, the tribulations Jesus promised, they're part and parcel of this life. But sometimes they hit us personally. It is in this extremely hard and intensive way. We cry out, where was God? Where were you, Lord? Now that's the question I think Psalm 124 begins with answering. You see, he's not just saying this, and I'll tell you who I think he is in a moment. It's a small h, he, though ultimately it's the Spirit, of course. This is a question that Psalm 124 begins by answering, and it answers well, and it answers it with great comfort. Now let me set the context for us. Psalms 120 through 124, if you look at your Bible, each one is called a psalm or song of ascents. Now we think of this as an ascent because it's on the pilgrimage route to Jerusalem, and Jerusalem, no matter where you're coming from to that great city, you go up to it. So it's an ascent. But I believe that Psalms 120 through 124 were written during the Babylonian exile and for those exiles. They were written during that captivity. And what they were meant for was to encourage those exiles during their 70 years as captives in that foreign land, some 900 miles from Jerusalem, to keep them strong during their time of exile. And more particularly, during their return to Jerusalem, As you read at the end of 2 Chronicles, the beginning of Ezra, Cyrus the Persian king released them. A very dangerous, very long journey. These psalms, these words of God to them, these 15 songs of ascents kept them strong and encouraged along the way. If you look at Psalm 124, it says at the top, a song of ascents of David. Now, some of the earliest manuscripts, including some of the early Greek translations, don't have of David. It could well have been written by some unknown author, but note that Psalm 125 is indeed inspired scripture, but I think it was by someone who followed David's style or David's phraseology or those emphases that would have been David's. Now that is not to say anything against the inspiration of scripture, but I want to give you just one example so you can follow me along with this because I don't think David wrote this, and it becomes fairly important in this message. If you look at Psalm 72, that ends with, the prayers of Jesse, son of David, are ended. Have you seen that? That's where the prayers of Jesse, David's prayers, Israel's great poet warrior, come to an end. But the superscript of that very psalm, which if you read it, is a psalm that David wrote to bless Solomon. David wrote for his son Solomon. Up in the superscript, it says a psalm of Solomon, who certainly did not write it. It's about Solomon. It's for Solomon. It's Solomon-ish. Psalm 124 is like that, too. So it says, of David. That doesn't mean David wrote it. I would join with the scholar A.F. Kilpatrick, the 20th century Cambridge Hebrew scholar. And he translated of Solomon as David-like. Reflects David's way of writing. It reflects the heart of the poet warrior. It's a spirit-inspired psalm. It's like him. It's written as if in honor of Israel's greatest king. And that's enough housekeeping. If it had not been the Lord who is on our side. So who is it that is saying this? He starts out, if it had not been the Lord who is on our side. It's almost as if he's saying, listen folks, if it had not been the Lord who is on our side, now repeat after me. So who is this? I believe it's a worship leader, probably a Levite. who's called the people together for an ad hoc kind of a worship meeting, not necessarily a Lord's Day meeting like we have here. Some sort of a worship service. He seems to expect the gathered worshipers, which are Israel in Babylon, to repeat what he said. It would not been the Lord who was on our side, let Israel now say. And he wants them to repeat it. And then they'll go on and recite some of the recent history as we will in a few moments. So it's a bit of informed speculation, a bit of careful speculation, that I think it's a Levite, a worship leader, maybe even a priest, and in going in and around the people, in maintaining his fellowship with them, in caring about their spiritual state and their relationship and their faith with God, he's heard this question in the marketplaces, in the homes. And they're saying, where was God when? Where was God when these things happened? And we'll go through those things in a moment. But like a good pastor today, this man cares for these people. He wants them to grow in confidence in God. And like a pastor today, he wants their faith in Christ, not then in Christ, but in God, to us in Christ. He wants them to expand, to grow beyond all bounds, for their confidence in God to be their strength and their ever-increasing hope. And so hearing this murmured question, this heartfelt question bursting out of their troubled breasts, he calls them together and says, if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, now repeat after me. Imagine with me this faithful Levi. He sounds the trump of assembly. The people gather like Nehemiah 8, as I mentioned just a few moments ago. No idea maybe why they're being called, yet they come, trusting this trustworthy man. And now at last he answers this question that they dare not even whisper in secret, only in the quiet corners where no one might hear, or whispering in the marketplace, yet he knew because he cared, because he's amongst the people, because he loved God. And he loved those precursing figures that he had of Christ to come, though he didn't see them, it was through a glass darkly, as the Apostle Paul says. So here's the dark question that was answered, that he sought to answer. Where was God? His answer. Have you ever called out where was God? Have you ever had that situation where you wonder, why wasn't he with me through this? Here's your answer. The Lord was on your side. Now repeat after me, even as we rehearse the dark times that we so recently endured, says this Levite to them, the Lord was on our side. You know, if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, then here's what would have happened. If it had not been him who was on our side, let Israel now say it, if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, are you with me, people? Israel, are you hearing what I'm saying? I know your angst. I know the anguish of your soul and your heart. I know the questions that you have about this recent, violent, awful, disgraceful, humiliating past that we just went through, that most of you just lived through. You saw it. If it had not been the Lord who was on our side when people rose up against us. People in Babylon, these exiles, they were being punished for their idolatry, for their disobedience to the terms of the covenant, for trusting in men rather than trusting God. Their suffering, their exile, and all they went through before that exile was the necessary response of a rightly offended and holy God. And so we need to understand, as we consider, I believe, the context of this psalm to be, we need to understand that our dark times are of our own doing. Now it's God who brings them upon us. God is sovereign in all things. God brings circumstances by his power because of his sovereignty in his goodness and providence, meaning for our good. He brings these hard times upon us to show us our error, just as he did Israel. when they were exiled from Jerusalem to this faraway land, to these people who had conquered them, who had ruined and ransacked and burned the temple. Why did that happen? Their own disobedience. Why do our dark times come upon us? It's usually our own doing. It's like the locust swarms in Joel, where God whistles for them because we seem to want them. In Joel's day there was blight, there was mildew, there was drought, and finally what little they had was consumed by these swarm after swarm after swarm of locusts. Why? They brought it upon themselves. It's as if they tested God to respond the way they knew God must respond. They knew God to be holy, at least they knew it in their minds. And when God responded by bringing these hard times upon them, They realized in a deeper way than just intellectually that God is holy and he does punish sin just as the exiles in Babylon had learned that. that they brought God's wrath upon them through their idolatry, through their breaking of the terms of the covenant, through what the scripture calls the high-handed sin, presumptuous sin, thumbing their nose at God as it were. They brought it upon themselves. And brethren, don't we do the same? You know, how we love to hear the promises of God, how he cares for us, how he hears us, how he answers our prayers. We love how he will never leave me or forsake me, but do we love as much to obey? Do we love as much to immerse ourself in the means of grace that he gives us? Do we love as much to have patience and trust him to answer? Oh, we love to hear the promises. Do we love the patience and the endurance and the hard work it takes us to avail ourselves of those promises? Because sometimes, dear ones, it's hard work. And usually that hard work can be, in one word, patience. I'll wait on the Lord. I'll wait and hear what God will speak to me, says the psalmist. Do we place any value on the hard work of prayer, the difficult work, the incredibly humiliating and humbling work of mortifying our sin, of resisting temptation, all so that we grow into the image of Christ? You see, the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, as Peter says. So what these people asked, what my Levite, might be an imaginary Levite, but I think it's a pretty good speculation, what he answers is this question, where was God when the Babylonians came and broke down our city's defenses? Where was God when they desecrated and ransacked and burned our temple? Where was God when our sons and our daughters were, our sons were slaughtered and our daughters were enslaved? Where was God when our wives were publicly ravished And we were put in chains. Where was God when we were marched 900 miles to our conqueror's land? Where was God then? And this Levite, this caring Levite, this may be a prototype for a modern-day pastor. His answer, this answer that I give to you, if these questions I've asked have any entrance into your spirit, The answer I give to you is the answer he gave to them, the answer that we have in scripture. Where was God? He was on your side. If God is for us, who can be against us? And he who did not spare his only son, how will he not in him also give us all things? If God did not spare his son, how could he be other than on your side? He was on their side when he warned them as far back as Moses and then through the prophets over and over again. 2 Chronicles 36 says that God sent to them his messengers, the prophets. The King James Version says God rose up early to send his warnings by his messengers. He was on their side warning them and he warned them because from start and through the end, that's where he was, for them. And we know that God works through his own glory, and that is his most jealous attribute, his glory. And all things work to God's glory. And whatever you do, whether you eat or you drink, do everything to the glory of God and Christ our Savior. He's on our side, warning. He's on our side in the scriptures, telling us where we go wrong. He's on your side. He's on my side when he brings circumstances in our lives, not to torment us, but to show us our sin and to bring us to true and godly repentance. It's tough. It's not easy to get over sin because sin's no big, no small deal. So God's on your side when doing it. Hebrews 12, 7 says it is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? When you're disciplined, when I am disciplined, when Israel is being disciplined, as hard as that was and everything they had to see and go through up to that exile into that land. It was for their good. It was because of the love of the Father that he glorified himself in that people, as through Christ he glorifies himself today in the church. So how is he on our side? How is this Levite answering this question to them, bringing encouragement to them? He's on your side in limiting the flood. You may have to go through the waters, but they don't have the final say over you, God does. You may have to go through the trial, but it's God who has the final say because it's God who's on your side. Verse three of our song, then they would have swallowed us up alive, the Babylonians, their enemies, when the anger was kindled against us. Then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us, then over us would have gone the raging waters. You see, the Lord decreed, and the Lord decrees, not cruelty, but discipline. Babylon's going to be judged for their excesses. They went too far in many ways. If you read Jeremiah, they're going to be judged for it. That's part of that cup of wrath that we preached about this morning. But God does these for our good, for his glory ultimately, for our good while we are here being formed in the image of Christ. Romans chapter 5 verse 3, not only that but we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering brings endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Does it sound as if God is your enemy or your ally? Is God against you or for you according to what I just read? It always makes you a little nervous when a preacher says something like that, does he really want me to say yes or no, am I supposed to answer or am I supposed to sit here quietly like a good reformed Christian? You don't have to answer. I think the answer is really pretty obvious. James chapter 1 verses 2 and 4, 2 through 4, count it all joy my brothers when you meet trials of various kinds. What are the trials for? To make you complete. To make you grow into the image of Christ. For your good because God is on your side. 1 Peter 1 verse 6, In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And this, dear ones, puts us in a good place when we are suffering the trials that God gives us. Because when you have a trial, as bitter as it can be, and sometimes they're bitter hard, because our sin is bitter encased within us and we won't give it up, but the trial can be so hard, this puts us in a good place. Because what is God doing? He's showing us our sin, he's bringing us to true and godly repentance, and he's proving, again, that even in that, he's a good and loving father who is on your side. It puts you smack dab in the path tread by our Savior when we go through those trials. What our sympathetic high priest himself in his humanity endured with us because he came in the form of sinful flesh. He came in the weakness of humanity so that he could learn what it means to suffer. I don't mean he had to be taught. I'm saying that through that, God experienced what he wouldn't experience had he stayed spirit in heaven. When Jesus Christ became flesh, when God became flesh in him, although he, Jesus, was a son, that's Hebrews 5.8, he learned obedience through what he suffered. Now I could add parenthetically to that, he learned obedience, he learned what it means to be like us. He learned what it means to be weak. He was never weak like we are, clearly. but he learned what it means somehow. So that he is sympathetic towards us, he's experienced what we experience, he knows the trials, he knows the temptations, he knows how hard it is. And yet was not God on his side? Would anyone say that God the Father was not on Jesus' side when he had to learn obedience through what he suffered? No one would say that. No less, read John 17 in Jesus' high priestly prayer, where the love of God for his son is the same love that he has for those who are in his son. A straight line from God, love for his son, love for those whom his son redeemed. He can no less be on your side than he can be on Jesus' side. He can no more abandon you than to abandon his son, because you're in his son. and our merit before God is his son Jesus and the faith that he gave us to believe in him. Then they would have swallowed us up alive when their anger was kindled against us. Then the flood would have swept us away. The torrent would have gone over us. Then over us would have gone the raging waters." Anger, flood, torrent, raging waters, all metaphors for those hard providences, for the cruelty of the victorious Babylonians, for the shame they felt in their defeat. You can ask, how can the answer be that God was on their side? The answer is then and then and then. If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, then you would have been swallowed up. If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, then the waters wouldn't have gone by you, they would have gone over you, they would have drowned, they would have swept you away. We'd be no more than a spot in the ocean, swept into the abyss. If Jesus was not on our side, then the raging waters would have gone over us. And when we go through the difficulties that we bring upon ourselves and that God brings in his sovereignty because of his goodness and his love, because he's on our side, we need to know that they don't sweep us away. They don't bring us to our final end. They teach us something. Just as Jesus learned obedience through what he suffered. God is on your side, even in these hard things. There are few things we learn, especially as Christians, by way of luxury and ease. He was on your side giving you the way of escape. Blessed be the Lord who has not given us as prey to their teeth. We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers. The snare is broken. We have escaped, which is 1 Corinthians 10, 13. No temptation has overtaken you. That is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. But with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. So He was on our side when He made us. He was on our side when He made us. How much more when He remade you in Christ and continues to mold you and shape you into that image. Now, it's not easy. It's not meant to be easy. It wasn't easy for our Lord to purchase our redemption. and our growth into his image are going through the trials that we bring upon ourselves and he gives us for our good. They can't be easy. They weren't meant to be easy. The goal that we're seeking is not an easy goal. To be like Christ, think about it. But we go through the waters. The waters don't overtake us. We go through the flood, but it doesn't sweep us away. Think for a moment of Israel crossing the Red Sea. You know, God didn't say, hey, I've got an easier way to go. Why don't you go east for a few days and circle around when the Red Sea dries up and you can just walk over the sand and then come back west and then continue on north? No. What did they learn about God? They learned about God, or how did they learn about God? By going through. The water didn't collapse on them until Jesus said, the waters can return. After the last one had gone through on dry land. Was that an easy thing for them? No, don't think of it as just, oh, we're just gonna go strolling through with these mountains of water on either side and the Egyptians behind us. But they learned something about God the hard way. Not by the water sweeping them away, not by going away from the waters, they went through it. And this is what the psalm says. Had God not been on our side, the waters would have swept us away. Our captors would have, we would have been prey to their teeth. They would have destroyed us all. Now what do you ever learn? It's easy. I remember when I got good at calculus. I was back in high school and then some in my business statistics class in college and university. Boy, I had to work at that. I really had to. I had to get it wrong so many times. I had to stay up late so many times, working those formulas over and over and over again until finally one of them worked the way it's supposed to and I saw why. And that new character, when I was a trumpet player in high school, I wanted to hit that high C, that first C above the staff. Boy, did that take a lot of work. That's a whole other story, and I'm not going to give the whole story behind that when I finally got that high scene a little bit above it. But I got to tell you, it didn't come easy. And the lessons we learn in Christ, they don't come easy either. So you mustn't push away the providences that God brings upon us. You can't run away from them. Because I think God will just bring them upon you again because of his love for you and because he is on your side. Romans 8.37 says, no, and all these things were more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I'm sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth or anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. We have good biblical examples of men who went through terrible hard times and despaired of God. Do you remember Jacob when he had to send his young son Benjamin? He thought Joseph to be dead. He had to send Benjamin and he tells his other sons who were going to bring Benjamin to meet this Pharaoh, this assistant to Pharaoh who he found out later was Joseph, of course. He says, all these things are against me. Everything is against me. You're against me. Pharaoh's against me. Egypt's against me. Famine's against me. God's against me. Whoops. No. God was preparing a place for a nation to be born. God was going to show him that Joseph was alive, sort of risen from the dead, if you like, as a precursor to Christ's resurrection. I think Joseph was the greatest type of Christ we have in the scripture. All these things are against me? No, God is working for you. He's working on your side, Joseph, and you'll soon see it. When these same exiles came back from Babylon in Haggai, in chapter 1, God rebukes them through the prophet, says, what are you doing building your own homes when my house lies in ruins? He says, now I'm paraphrasing, we're not going to read the whole thing, but he says basically, get to work for I am with you, says the Lord, which is repeated two more times in that book. He promises in the glory of that temple that you're going to build will exceed the glory of the temple that was destroyed, which was Solomon's temple, one of the wonders of the world. Do I have time for a quick excursus? No, I can't tell, but I will anyway. Why did that temple exceed the glory of Solomon's? Solomon's temple was overlaid with gold. It was one of the wonders of the world. This other temple, they cried so loud that it was heard miles away. Now there's some rejoicing. They rejoiced loud. You couldn't tell who was rejoicing and who was crying, but they were weeping so loud that it overcame the rejoicing. Why? Because it was so small. It was such a plain building compared to what it was. But what does God say? He says, this glory will exceed the former glory. Now a lot of theologians look at that and say, yes, because Jesus walked in that temple. That's not it. When Jesus walked in that temple, it was a corrupt and putrid place. That's why he had to cleanse it. How did that glory exceed? Because God was on their side. How was God on their side? Because they finished that temple. And why did that temple's glory exceed the previous? Because when Solomon built, his father David had given him all the money he needed, had given him the plans, had given him the organization for the priesthood and for the Levites and for the workers. He had secure borders. He had the strongest military in the area. He had everything that he built. Praise God, Solomon built a wonder of the world in honor of God. Why did this plain cubicle exceed it? Because they built it without money, without army, without a seated king. They were captive to Cyrus, king of Persia. They owed him their allegiance and their taxes. And even in that, surrounded by enemies, they built this temple by faith in the God who said, I am with you, now go build. God was on their side. Do you know that if God is on your side, which he absolutely is because of Christ, even when the dark cloud was not your own doing, that he's on your side? I mean, can you imagine opening your door to your house? The doorbell rings, and there's those first responders looking grave, and right away your heart sinks. I'm making this up. This didn't happen to me or anybody I know. And one of them says, we're sorry to tell you that that man took one too many drinks and drifted into the lane that your son was driving in. Where was God? Where was God when that chromosome marker that you passed on to your child finally manifested? Where was God when you picked up the phone and found out that you have fill in the blank? You know, we're not always the cause of these things. Even if it's not the direct result of a direct, discreet sin, we need to remember that God is still on our side. God is still showing us. God is still molding us into the image of Christ. I was not the cause of the cancer that took my wife of 48 years last March. And yet, I by faith, I'm not boasting about this, but I by faith believe that God is working good. I don't know what it is yet. I'm still suffering from it. But I know that he's on my side. My faith will grow stronger. I know that she is with her true husband. And she would never say, I want to go back and see him one more time. She would never say that. And if she did, her true husband would say, I'm not letting you go. You're mine. I know this. I didn't cause it, but he took her. And I know that God is on my side and I know God is working good in me and I know I will see that good either in this life or the next. And most of us can do the same. When that marriage breaks up, when that health abandons us, when children turn prodigal, all these things, we need to hang on to this sure and certain hope If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, let Israel, let the church now say, if it was not Christ Jesus who promised, I'll never leave you or forsake you. I don't see it yet, but I, by faith, believe I will see it. If it had not been him, Christ, who was on our side, God, who's on my side because of Christ. I can't even speculate where that would go. It's not just because it could have been worse. I can't imagine anything worse than last March. But the Lord was on my side as he is on yours because of Christ his son, our Savior. He's on our side for Jesus's sake. Jesus, our sympathetic high priest who prayed in John 17, the glory that you've given me I've given to them that they may be one even as we are one. I in them and you in me that they may become perfectly one so the world may know that you sent me and love me even as you loved them. There's that straight line, from God through his son to those in his son who his son suffered for. When all we cherish is taken away, we are left with only this, to grow closer to Christ, to know him more and more, and to learn that this is all we need. If it had not been Jesus who was on our side, let the church now say, if it had not been the Lord Jesus Christ who was then, who is now, whoever will be on our side, then let's just say amen. Amen? Gracious Heavenly Father, again, we thank you for this gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that he, indeed, because of you, Father, or you because of him, are on our side. And we pray, Father, that you continue to work good in us, continue to grow us in this gospel into the image and the form of the Lord Jesus Christ. Receive much glory for yourself as you work this in us. And may our confidence in Christ Jesus ever grow and our love for you, Father, expand more and more as we see you working in us and carrying us along. We ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.