Last week, I asked a question. It was a rhetorical question as we looked at communion on that particular service. We had a communion service, if you remember last week. And I asked this question concerning the Old Testament. Why did it take so long for Jesus to come? Which is a legitimate question. You know, here Adam had sinned at the creation and 4,000 years later, we looked at the incarnation. Why did it take so long? But as we've been reading in the Old Testament, and as I've been preaching from the Old Testament, I mentioned that in Galatians chapter 4 verse 4, but when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his son born of a woman born under the law. There was a particular time frame that was set in eternity that Jesus would be born. And one of the reasons that we could see this, the Old Testament Scriptures provides a record of every possible type of gospel picture in sin, grace, faith, reprobation, redemption, regeneration, sacrifice, human depravity, wickedness, idolatry, impurity, And we're going to see in the two chapters today, this will be borne out. We'll see a little bit more and also some perspectives here. In chapters 10 and 11 of 2 Chronicles, today's message is entitled, Hearts Set to Seek Christ. And the key verse that we're looking at is 2 Chronicles 11, verse 16. It says, And those who had set their hearts to seek the Lord God of Israel came after them from all the tribes of Israel to Jerusalem to sacrifice to the Lord, the God of their fathers. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name and for his sake, we thank you, Lord, for the text that is before us. We ask you, Father, to Minister unto us as we worship you from the Word. Give us understanding of the Word that we may worship you better. Lord, I ask you to be with me that as I've asked for our congregation to pray for me that I might decrease so that Christ may increase. Father, minister by your Holy Spirit to our congregation that we may be the people that you would call us to be. Father, that you'll minister unto me wisdom and knowledge that I may be a vessel for your words to come forth and that they would come forth powerfully that we may exalt Christ and that you may be glorified. Have your way with us as we worship you today. I ask, Lord, for salvations among those that are not saved. And Lord, glorification is as much as is possible for your people. In other words, may Jesus, the glory of Jesus, be upon us as we hear your word and abide in your word and apply your word today. In Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. For a breakdown of these two chapters, I tried to keep it as simple as possible, but we have a proposition from the people. And we covered this in 1 Kings 12 some time ago, this particular incident. And Chronicles is a, 1 and 2 Chronicles is really rather wonderful because it eliminates all the wicked kings of the northern kingdom pretty much. Only in their interaction with the southern kings of Judah at this point as the kingdom split, Rehoboam the son of Solomon and now Jeroboam who is an Ephraimite from the tribe of Ephraim, a descendant of Joseph. He is given the northern portion of Israel because of Solomon's idolatry. This was prophesied in the days when Solomon was still alive and that his wives, his 700 wives and his 300 concubines, many of them from other nations, turned Solomon's heart. And so there was a proposition from the people after the death of Solomon unto Rehoboam his son. If you will relieve us from the heavy burden of the yoke of your father, then, you know, we'll follow you. And this was the proposition of the people from chapter 10 verses 1 through 5. And then the proclamation of the king comes after that, after he receives counsel from the elders, he goes to the older men first, and that's somewhat respectful. They go to the older men, then he goes to the young men. And the older men gave counsel, listen to the people, be kind to them, speak kind words. It's actually in verse seven, which I'd like to read. It says, and they said to him, if you will be good to this people and please them and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever. And the young men, he went to the young men and the young men said differently, tell them, you know, my little finger is bigger than my father's thigh as my father whips upon you. You know, I'm paraphrasing, that's not what the passage says. Whips upon you, mine will be scorpions. You're gonna suffer more than what my father caused you to suffer. And we find out by verse 15 that this is really from the Lord, providential dealings with the Lord. But let me just comment on this. In 1 Kings 12, verses six through 14, when I preached it at that time, I mentioned it's absent of these older men, their counsel, seeking after the Lord. Their counsel was really kind of something like what we would see today in church. please the people with whatever they say you should do, do that. And many pastors are taking that passage, that kind of verse and that thinking like, well, this is what the people want, so this is what we're gonna give them, rather than giving them the truth. But now that we're in Chronicles, I want to take a step back and say, maybe even though in silence, these elders didn't seek the Lord, but it didn't tell us that they didn't seek the Lord. It didn't tell us that they did. Maybe they did seek the Lord. And by the words of Scripture, even from the English Standard Version, slightly different from the King James Version, if you will If you will be good to this people, all right, be good, be righteous. And if you will please them and speak good words to them, bring to them the pleasure of heaven because in the presence of God, there is fullness of joy and pleasure forevermore, Psalm 16 tells us. So bring them the truth of the gospel before the gospel came. Bring them good things, bring them the word of God. Speak good words to them and they will be your servants forever. There's a foreshadow of the gospel right there in that message. And so there's that possibility. I wanna just present that. However, in the providence of God, it turned out just a little bit differently. The proclamation of the king, he took the young men's counsel, but this was all by God's word because in verse 15, it says, so the king did not listen to the people for it was a turn of affairs brought about by God that the Lord might fulfill his word, which he spoke by Ahijah, the Shilonite, to Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. This is, you know, Ahijah, he'd already told Jeroboam that he's going to be king. This is when Solomon was in the depth of his idolatry, which we don't find in 2 Chronicles. We have to go all the way back to 1 Kings to recognize that he was idolatrous, right? So we have the providential dealings of Jehovah God in verses 15 to 19. This is brought about by God. in that and using all the characters and all the actors, if you will, of this entire history. These are real people. They had real thoughts and feelings. They existed during that time and everything in their circumstance was true history. However, it's brought about to us to understand that we serve a sovereign God. Then in chapter 11 in verses one through four, there's a forbidden war or a war was forbidden for Rehoboam to go to war with Jeroboam because now the kingdom is split. And at this time though, Rehoboam might not be the wisest cookie in the jar. or the brightest light bulb in the refrigerator because he took the counsel of the young men. He was at least at this point a person who listened to the prophets. He listened to God. And so we see in chapter 11 that as he decides, he's built up a war, a arsenal here, and he's built up an army in order to go to war with Jeroboam. But Shemaiah, the man of God, a prophet comes to him and says, don't do this. God is, got this thing covered and you don't go to war. So he doesn't go to war. He allows the Northern Kingdom to split off, and he does something wise. He does something wise. In chapter 11, verses 5 through 12, he presents the fortified cities, which Brother Mike had read. of all those, and good job on the pronunciations of the names, brother, and it doesn't matter what they're called, but those are the cities that he fortified. He put fortresses there in these strategic cities and good on Rehoboam for building up defense. And there's a lesson there for us if we chose to dig into that, that we should fortify our own cities against this sin that so easily besets us. And then in verses 13 to 17, we find the faithful lovers of God worship in Jerusalem. The Levites had left because now Jeroboam, it had been established in our reading, and there's more details of it in 1 Kings, but that Jeroboam had eliminated the worship of Jehovah God in the Northern Kingdom and set up two calves, not just one. He set up two calves, which is not in our reading today, it's in 1 Kings, but he set up a calf, a golden calf in Bethel down in the South, and then further North up in Tel Dan, he set up another golden calf and said that the Levites cannot worship Jehovah God. Even though it was through Ahijah the prophet a prophet of Jehovah God that gave him the word that he would be king He's not gonna serve that God. I'll serve these golden calves Poor wretched Jeroboam so Jeroboam, in doing so, the Levites come up into Jerusalem. They ascend up to Jerusalem and then they worship there, lay the left, even their possessions, as brother Mike had read unto us. But our key verse there in verse 16 of chapter 11, and those who had set their hearts to seek the Lord God of Israel came after them from all the tribes of Israel to Jerusalem to sacrifice to the Lord, the God of their fathers. Did they stay or did they worship and then go home? Well, my answer to that is yes. Some of them probably packed up and then just went into the southern kingdom. Some of them probably worshiped in the three feasts that are required and say, hey, I got a possession up here, I'm gonna live up here amongst the idolaters, but I'm gonna go and worship the God that I serve, the God that has redeemed me, the Jehovah God, we're in the temple, which he has said his name is in Jerusalem. That's where we're going to go. And we take that there and move to verses 18 to 23. As far as the breakdown, chapter 11, the family of Reboam is listed. And we find out that Here in Chronicles, a bleak picture is painted in 1 Kings about Rehoboam. But here we see a glimpse of that he was somewhat righteous and worshiped the Lord, but then his heart turned. His heart turned in chapter 12, the very first verse, we'll read that next week. When the rule of Rehoboam was established, and he was strong, he abandoned the law of the Lord and all Israel with him. So he abandoned at that particular point. There was a setting up the fortified cities, that was of the Lord. He listened to Shammai, the prophet, the man of God. He didn't go to war with Jeroboam. So Jeroboam fell just like Solomon fell. And that tells us something as well. that there's no righteous man on the planet in which we can trust. I ask you time and again, don't trust in me. Please don't trust. I will fail you. I've said this from the pulpit for 22 years. I will fail you. Coming up on 23 years now. I will fail you. Men will fail you. We are men. human beings, descendants of Adam, there is only one who won't fail you, the one in whom you must trust, and it's the Lord Jesus Christ, in Him alone. In fact, possibly on the other possibility of the old men's council where I mentioned that, maybe they had rested upon the wisdom of Solomon for so long that they didn't ask the Lord. And even Shemaiah the prophet is because God prompted him to come to Rehoboam and have him hear the word of God. Because we're weak unless we're provoked. And this is the thing that we see. We have a command from God from the very beginning to worship him, to recognize him, to acknowledge him. We have a responsibility to him. And I start off with that in understanding the blessing of our text. Again, I'd like to read it from chapter 11 and verse 16. It says, and those who had set their hearts to seek the Lord, God of Israel came after them from all the tribes of Israel to Jerusalem to sacrifice to the Lord, the God of their fathers. Now, see, because of that verse, we recognize that there was this thing that was going on in the 18th and 19th centuries of this ridiculous doctrine called the 10 lost tribes. Well, obviously they're not lost. God knows where they are. And we see from this verse here that other tribes, not just Judah and the Levites, but that other tribes had come because they worshiped the Lord. of those tribes, they were recognized and known. They weren't lost. They were still those of those families that worship Jehovah God. And that there was a command given, the submissive faithfulness of God's redeemed. A royal command came through David in 1 Chronicles 22, which we had read only months ago through David. And in verse 19, 1 Chronicles chapter 22 and verse 19, I have it here. It says, now set your mind and heart to seek the Lord your God. Arise, build the sanctuary of the Lord God so that the ark of the covenant of the Lord and the holy vessels of God may be brought into a house built for the name of the Lord. And so the house had yet to be built and Solomon built it. But this command that was given was not just through David as king, it was through David as a prophet. And the word came forth for the people to worship, to set their hearts and their minds upon the Lord. To worship Him in this place that is designated. And so we recognize this responsibility. And I quoted this, that time that I preached from 1 Chronicles 22 from Mr. Spurgeon. He preached a sermon early in the year in 1886. where he says, quote, brethren, nobody is good by accident. No man ever became holy by chance. There must be a resolve, a desire, a panting, a pining after obedience to God, or else we shall never have it. Set your heart then to seek the Lord your God, end quote. And that's a great quote. It was worth quoting it last time when I was preaching in First Chronicles. 22, and it's worth quoting it today. That we have a command from God that he is a holy God and that these are the things that we should do. We'll be surrounded by idolatry just as the Northern Kingdom was, so we should escape. Here, like today, the idolatry that comes with celebrating a new year to come We've escaped into the Southern Kingdom. We've escaped and ascended under the Jerusalem, which is the people of God, and we've come together in Christ's church in order to seek Him, to set our hearts upon Him, our hearts set to seek the Lord. There's responsibility of man to act faithfully. We see in that verse, 2 Chronicles 11 and verse six, no fanfare other than that they left where they were and came up to Jerusalem, in verse 16. And those who had set their hearts to seek the Lord God of Israel came after them and all the tribes of Israel to Jerusalem to seek and to sacrifice there. But the reliance must be upon the truth of God and the word of God. They didn't just come up with that themselves. Well, just as Jerusalem is the place, they heard it through the word of God and the Holy Spirit, though it hadn't been, he hadn't been given as a permanent indwelling as he would be given after Christ was crucified, risen from the dead, ascended into heaven, and then sent in the Holy Spirit. However, the Holy Spirit was still working. And there must be a prompting in these in order for faith to have its way. And one of the ways in the Old Testament that this was done was through God's providence and in His workings, in His sovereign workings, that this could be made known to them who were of faith and also unto others, which is how we see the sovereign providence of God. We see it, if I may back up just a moment, we see it much more easily than they do. than they did and they do. Because Christ had not yet come, many things were mysterious to them. But we looking with an examining scope backwards to what had gone on, and we see it through the lens of Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said of us, In John 15 verse five, he said of his disciples, he says, I am the vine, in John 15 and verse five, I am the vine, you are the branches, whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. And here's the key part, for apart from me, you can do nothing. How much is nothing? Can you hold it in your hand? Nothing. We cannot do anything. So we should not take a lot of credit and break our arms patting ourselves on the back for lifting ourselves up by our bootstraps because, oh, we did what was good. God in his sovereign providence made it available because men are wicked. He brought Ahijah the prophet to Jeroboam, said you will be king because Solomon, who asked for wisdom, who received wisdom, that wisdom didn't last. The only wisdom that lasts is Jesus Christ, who is wisdom. And he is the one in which we trust. Solomon's wisdom didn't last, and so by the time it gets to Rehoboam, there's not a righteous king there. not totally righteous. We couldn't rest upon him. So God brings about in his providence this situation where the kingdom splits and now, whoa, Jerusalem is now in the southern kingdom, in a different kingdom. We are now citizens of a kingdom that's idolatrous because Jeroboam set up golden calves, two of them, twice as bad as Aaron, who only made one. In our circumstances, we see how this plays out. The indiscretions of poor counsel that we seek after, well, you know, maybe we could try to make our church grow if we put up a big band here. No, that's listening to the people and not listening to God. Those things that come up, which we see in 2 Chronicles 10 6-11, well, listen to the people, the old men say. and then you'll have a kingdom that won't be separated. I don't want to be divisive, but if I preach the truth, it will divide. The truth divides. It's alive or quick in the King James Version. It's quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. And being a two-edged sword, it cuts and it divides. What does it divide? It divides light from darkness. truth from error. It divides right from wrong. It divides godliness from ungodliness. And so we see the indiscretions of poor counsel is a lesson for us. And it was set forth in the old times, in the olden days, in order that we might have a lesson that say, apart from Christ, this is what's going to happen to us. or but because of Christ, and men are wicked. Now God in his providence puts that there and says, fear not, for I am with thee, that Christ is with us. And that though there is the indiscretions of poor counsel, there are plenty of sermons on the internet that are showing exaltation of the ingenuity of man as opposed to the glories of Christ and trusting in him alone. Then we see the insolence of Rehoboam in 2nd Chronicles chapter 10 verse 15 Verse 15, where it says, So the king did not listen to the people, for it was a turn of affairs brought about by God, that the Lord might fulfill his word, which he spoke by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam and the son of Nebat. Though he listened to Shemaiah a little bit later on, Rehoboam still had a responsibility. And this is one of the things as far as we see from verse 16. This is why I say there's two perspectives as far as the counsel from the old men. Because we are what they call congregational in polity. that if you decide that it's time for you to get a new pastor, that the Lord's speaking through you, because we believe in what's called the priesthood of believers, that every person who is saved has a responsibility to God, and that as a congregation, we come together in that responsibility to call a pastor, and that I am a member of this church, and when I fail to live up to being a pastor for this church, that as a congregation you should recognize that and you're responsible for that. And as the people said, Rehoboam, this is what you need to do, then I should listen to the congregation, Rehoboam should listen to the congregation within that regard, and so there's an insolence there. I'm not gonna do what you're going to do. There are a lot of pastors that are like that today that'll say, well, this is my church and this is what we're gonna do. No, it's not. I don't wanna stand too close to you, pastor, when you're saying something like that, because this is the Lord Jesus Christ's church and this is the bride of Christ. And you're bringing strange fire and when you come forth from the tent curtains after offering strange fire, you're gonna be struck down in front of all the people. Great is the fall of him who's foolish enough to think it's his church and not the Lord Jesus Christ's. This is the Lord Jesus Christ's church. So there's an insolence in Rehoboam who's set up to be a king, a man who could be, as a descendant of David, a man after God's own heart like David. And he had every possibility to, every, you know, opportunity to have those resources to be just like a David, a man after God's own heart, a warrior king. But he tried to set himself up as his own warrior king with the fortified cities and so forth, an insolence. But that's what we have to face. We face an insolence of those, you know, the indiscretions and the self-exaltation of men that would present themselves to be something when we're nothing. What glory do we have apart from Christ? Nothing, we die, we get sick, we lose our voices. What honor do we have apart from Christ? We are pathetic human beings who are descendants of Adam, so filled with the corruptions of flesh. We have nothing apart from him and we are nothing without him. And then the idolatry that surrounds the place, that Jeroboam, it's only given one verse here where Jeroboam sets up idols and carries the people off. 1 Kings 12, verses 25 to 33 present even greater details than that. And we covered it way back then. But the idolatry of Jeroboam in Israel existed then because it exists now, does it not? It existed in my own life for many years before the Lord saved me and then even after the Lord saved me. I read about myself in the Old Testament, not just the New Testament. Because there were kings that were righteous and loved the Lord, but they did not remove the high places or the Ashtoreth, the groves. And so those wooded places where there were these little tiny idols. Yes, they existed in my life just as they exist in yours. We see this. There are things that are set up for idolatry that cause us to love those things in our life as much as we love Christ or even more, even more. And I think of that, and that's why 2023 is this big year for me to say that any minister that says, pastor, how can I pray for you and your congregation in the Nail Chickalaska? I said that their pastor would decrease that Christ be increased. I think that'll be the best prayer for me that will bless our church, that if, The Lord, like He has done in the past in my life, stripped away from us, Lisa and I, and me in particular, stripped away from me those things that would cause my eyes to be anywhere but on the Lord Jesus Christ through His Word and through His people, and in the providential situations and circumstances around me, then it must go. You don't need that of your pastor. And I can't ask of you to live a sinless life as much as a sinner saved by grace is able. I can't ask you to live a holy life. If I'm not living that life, if I'm not surrendered to God, I can't even ask you to take a step for Jesus. Your pastor must be the first person to be so surrendered to our Christ. that when I preach a sermon that says surrender, submit, you're responsible, but thank God he's sovereign, because he's gonna bring situations in your life, whereas our prayers now become prayers that are fulfilled by God through us. We become the answer to other people's prayers as we pray. He'll minister unto us in a way that will fill in those things that we think that we gotta fill in ourselves. Rehoboam thought, well, if I just build fortified cities, I'll be stronger. No, the Bible says otherwise. Jesus said unto Paul, who had a thorn in his flesh, when my grace is sufficient for you, because when you are weak, You're strong because you're strong, not in yourself, but strong in him. Our strength is in Christ and in the power of his might. Idolatry surrounds us, but it's also among us and it's also in us. And we must hear the Lord when he brings those things to our mind and act upon them. And so there's a salvation message in these two chapters today. The stuff and nonsense in today's self-centered philosophical Christianity, oh my goodness, it's just like, well, what do the people want? Maybe we should have a... Some godly men are gone and so now young men are raised up and they try to figure out how they can Engineer. That's pretty much what seminaries turn into anymore. It's not cemetery, they're not dead. They're actually pretty alive. They're engineers. How can we engineer a better truth? As if they can make Jesus better. As if they can make, we gotta make Jesus appealing. Is it not enough that God became a man and that He tasted death for everyone, as it says in Hebrews chapter 2, that He suffered death, and when He suffered death, He not only suffered death, He tasted death. In other words, that when He suffered the wrath of God, dying, that the depths of everything that is death, every nook and cranny of death, was experienced and realized and poured out upon our Lord Jesus Christ so that we who are dying and we who are filled with sickness and we who may have cancer or diabetes or any of these ailments, we can't ever say to the Lord Jesus Christ, you don't understand. Oh, Jesus understands far more than we'll ever understand. in these dying, decaying bodies, though he was perfect and precious and sinless, that when he hung upon that tree and he suffered death and tasted death, the death that he went through went far beyond what any man could ever experience, not only in the suffering death for the atonement of our sins, but also in the the corruptions of flesh without him seeing corruption. Pastor Blau, in a sermon that he preached back in 1992, mentioned it this way concerning temptations, that Jesus not submitting to temptation and with temptations coming upon him, He was quoting actually B.B. Warfield, or paraphrasing B.B. Warfield, that he could experience temptation far beyond what we'll ever know because when we submit to temptation, the temptation's over, we've already submit to it, we've fallen under it, and we don't know its depths. But because Jesus couldn't be tempted to submission, but he withstood the worst temptations that anyone could ever, experience that he knows temptation far more than we can ever know it. And Sister B, Sister Vicki, I'm grateful for your dad for that. I almost wept when I was, and I'm almost weeping now just thinking about it because God will use men like Pastor Blau. God will use men and women and children like you. And God does. But get away from the stuff and nonsense of silly, self-centered, self-exalted Christianity. Get to the place where you know that there is only one who is exalted high and lifted up, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one to be worshiped above all things. Because to not worship him is the greatest of all sins, and those sins must be dealt with. And I'm not talking about just absentmindedly taking a paperclip from somebody else's desk and forgetting about it, which is stealing, by the way. So repent to that. I do, yes, Lord, I repent to that. But I'm talking about these things that we know that just are not glorifying the God. They're not glorifying the God. And they have a reward, a retribution, a recompense. They must be paid. And Jesus Christ paid for them. and the greatest sin, the greatest rejection of sin. Someone asked me this week about why God does not hear my prayers if I'm not saved. Because God, there's several reasons. I think I can come up with about seven of them. And in our prayer on our Wednesday night when we're going over prayer, I may cover those hindrances to our prayers being answered. But one of them is that God does not answer the prayer of one who has not been saved by God's grace because he is a holy God and that the sins that we just so bandy about willy-nilly and don't care a thing of Christ, don't care a thing of God, that is in the way. He can't answer those prayers because that would not be a blessing to the one who is praying. But when we surrender in prayer to say, Lord, forgive my sins, cleanse me from all unrighteousness. I trust and believe on Jesus that must be taken care of first so that then those other prayers won't be hindered. But sin hinders our prayers because it is a holy God that's listening. Finally, this is the last key to it. Set your heart to seek God. And this is not just for those that don't believe, because looking out, I don't know if we really have anyone who has not made a confession of faith right here. But it's for you too, who believe. It's for you too, it's for me too. The setting of our heart upon God is not an one time been there, done that, bought the t-shirt event. It is a constant enterprise. I think I wrote a devotional on that this week. It's a constant enterprise that this is what the providence of God does. The sovereignty of God is such that he, in Romans chapter eight, where it says that he works all things together for good to them that love God. For those who are the called according to his purpose, for whom he did foreknow, he did also predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that he may be the firstborn among many brethren. Romans 8, 28 and 29. And so, As he's working all things together for good, he is sovereign. And yet with that responsibility, he says, these are my commands. But if I just do them because of a sense of obligation, I become a legalist as if the strength of my own efforts have done it. But when I trust in Christ and recognize I can't do it apart from him, it's not glorious. It might be good, it might be beneficial for someone else. It might make me look good, and that's not. what we want. It's not if I'm to decrease and Him to increase, it's to give glory to Christ. And so when I do His work according to my trust in Him, I do it in the strength of His might. And He receives the glory, even if someone else says, well, you did that just so that you could appear holy, you could appear pious, you could appear righteous. Doesn't matter what they think. only matters what God thinks. It only matters what Jesus thinks. And so when we set our hearts to seek God, Hebrews 11 and verse six says that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Without faith, it's impossible to please God, it all says. So now that I have faith in Christ, I please him and now my heart is set to seek him because I believe it's in the quote today. And you don't have to look at it now, look at it a little bit later, that Spurgeon mentions that we haven't seen him. He was only seen by the world for a short time, for a small period of time in the eternal scheme of things, but even for the age of the earth, for 6,000 years that the earth has been around, he's only been seen for a short time, but we trust in the testimony that we have in scripture that Christ is. And so because we don't see him, we must see him with spiritual eyes and it requires faith. And we can't work that up on our own. It requires all the miracle of heaven, the grace of God to pour down upon us so that we could see him with spiritual eyes. And we must continually seek him because that is the the constant enterprise of the Christian life. Maybe I need to change the name of the message. The constant enterprise of the Christian life, because that will keep us from sinning. That'll keep us from not to live, it won't cause us to live a perfect life, but it'll keep us from bringing dishonor to the God that has saved us. who has sent his son to die for us, who has sent the Holy Spirit to live in us. And then having done that, that he has promised that he will rule and reign in our lives forever and ever, and his presence will be a constant joy with pleasures forevermore. That's the God that we're worshiping today. That's the life that we should surrender. And let's make 2023 this jump off point to say, it's all of Jesus or nothing at all. Jesus is everything and not just something. Let 2023 be that for us. If there's a resolution at all, I can't remember how many 70 something, 78 resolutions that Jonathan Edwards wrote. So a resolution isn't a bad thing. But make this one resolution that we seek Christ with all our hearts and that the constant, the constant enterprise of our Christianity is to seek the Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Our most blessed and gracious Father in God, in Jesus' name and for his sake, we thank you, Lord, for your word, and for the blessing of who Christ is and what he has done. May Christ be everything to us, that this year be not a year that is one that we can mark as one that we've sat upon our laurels, that you have made us as responsible as we can be to respond to the blessings of a sovereign God. You are sovereign, you've given us a responsibility that to meet at the foot of the cross and may we never wander far, far at all. In Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.