You may know what it's like to get through a hard time. A hard time that felt like it would never end. And to be thankful. On the 3rd of February 1788, 237 years ago, almost to the day, Richard Johnson held a church service under a large tree in Sydney Cove. Last week we celebrate as a nation Australia Day, I wonder, just putting it out there, not causing controversy or anything, but maybe if the people want to change a date, why don't we pick the 3rd of February? The first sermon, the first time the gospel was preached on the soil of this land. I've seen it. I've been there. You can go there. It's not a very significant monument. There's an obelisk in Sydney, city of Sydney, and you can see there on the sign some short words about Richard Johnson. They say the church was erected there. Well, more than the church being erected there, the building, what matters is he preached the gospel there. It was under a tree at the time. They had been at sea for eight months. Aboard the ship, the Golden Grove, I knew a few friends that lived in the street Golden Grove in Newtown, named after that ship. Richard Johnson preached from Psalm 116, this psalm. He preached from Psalm 116, particularly verses 12 and 14. His sermon is remembered. We don't have it fully quoted or written down or a copy of it, but we know that he preached from this text. What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me? This Bible-believing minister and chaplain of the First Fleet preached the gospel on the Australian soil for the first time. Because at eight months at sea, I imagine... I've never been eight months at sea. I once went on the ferry across the Tasmania and that was enough. I was okay, but, you know, others in our family? It was hard to do the rocking thing when you're lying down. It does things. Eight months at sea, though, I imagine, in 1787, 1788, means facing the desperation of danger, possibly death. Any storm or threat could come. Johnson and those who were with him knew what it was to experience desperation and yet thankfulness. What shall we render return? What shall we give thanks for all that God has done for us, for His benefits to us. Now, if you want to find out more about Richard Johnson, there's a recent podcast around. It's a podcast formerly known as Semper Reformanda. It's probably going to get a new name, but we'll see how you go. It's on our website. You can go and listen to Mikey Dion speak about this, Australian Church History, Volume 1, because I think there'll be more volumes to come, but we'll see. But I mention that because that is on the 3rd of February, 1788, a time and place when we remember and look back at people being delivered, people being given that opportunity of seeing the other side of the storm, people celebrating God's grace. What about us? I think if you live in Australia, there is some connection to that. That's part of our history. But what about us as a church? Well, it's not a coincidence, it's been planned, but on the 3rd of February 2013, we celebrate today, that first Sunday in February every year we celebrate our birthday as a church. From the 3rd of February 2013, 12 years ago, almost to the day, a church service started in a funeral chapel just up over the hill and down the street. It started in a funeral chapel of all places. Welcome to Reforming Church were the first words. A Presbyterian church in Bendigo. Welcome to Reforming Church. And since that day, we have seen more and more people joining with Jesus and his church. And we can now say today to one another, happy birthday, Reforming. And we can do that by also asking the question of verse 12. What shall I render to the Lord? What shall I return? What shall I give thanks? It's not a payback, but a giving of thanks to the Lord for all his benefits to us. What could we do? For 12 years, our testimony as a church has been that Jesus does change everything. Jesus does change everything. Jesus doesn't come into the world to change a little bit, to tweak your personality, your circumstances, to do some kind of just some fine trimming around the edges because you don't need that much change. Jesus comes to change us internally, inside out. As we heard from Ezekiel earlier at the start of the baptism, it is God's intent and promise in the gospel that he would come and rip out the heart of stone, spiritually, and replace it with a real heart of flesh, a heart that beats by the grace of God, that we would be changed in our hearts. And so we as a church would say over 12 years, we've seen this before. We've seen people baptize. We've seen people fest faith. We've seen the gospel go forth and it changed everything for people. When I meet Christians who kind of almost treat Jesus as an appendage, a secondary thing. Yes, I'm a Christian, but that gives me conservative values. I'm a Christian and that just gives me certain political leanings left or right. When I hear that, I don't think you are a Christian. I don't think you're born again. You've not understood More than that, you've not been changed. What shall we give thanks for such a change? What would we do to know that we've been delivered? Christ's people, the church, know, no matter if it's 1788, 2013, 2024, 2025, we know that we've lived in this world, like Richard Johnson and friends, we live in this world, which is really just like a ship going through a storm, often in desperation. But that means for us, our prayer is one of thankfulness that we get to depend upon Christ, depend upon God who is there for us. This is our testimony. So when people ask, when people say, you know, Ivan, what do you believe about life? His answer can be Jesus. Oh, what do you believe about Jesus? Why do you love Jesus? might come the question, or it might come for us as a church. Why do you love Jesus? It might come for you. Why do you love Jesus? And the answer is in Psalm 116. Why? Why do you love the Lord? Have a look, Psalm 116, verse one. I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy. He has changed everything for me by his mercy. When you read Ivan's testimony or you hear a Christian's testimony, you read a testimony of God without him, like Ivan says, I'd have no purpose. Consistent atheism, like that of Friedrich Nietzsche, finds at the end that there's no purpose. There's no reason to live. But when you know Jesus, And he gave his life that changes life now because it changes your perspective on eternity. It changes everything. That is the Psalmist testimony. I love the Lord. Why? Because he has heard my voice, my pleas of mercy. Now at this point, and I'm hoping you still hear me. So I'm just going to go a bit louder and the media team will do their magic, but let's try this. Everyone still hear me okay? At this point, I know that often it's common to think we're to love God simply because we're commanded to love Him. Love God because we're commanded to. And from young to old and all those who live under the covenant grace of God, We know we can love God because he gives such a command. It actually, it's liberating. But more than that, have a look in Psalm 116. We don't just love God because he commands us to. We love God because he cares for us and he hears our voice. Just like now with the rain on the roof, there are so much in our world that causes us to feel desperate and it drowns out our voice. There's so much in our world that we face our own fragility and we feel like we can't cry out loud enough to get the help we need. This, as we look at the Lord and his character, look at verse two. Verse one, I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my pleas of mercy. Verse two, because he inclined his ear to me. Therefore I will call on him as long as I live. Notice this, he inclined, that's the verb, the verb is the word inclined. I use a pencil and write it all throughout my Bible. So people get a bit angsty about, oh, are you writing in a Bible? Well, firstly, the numbers, the numbers weren't original to the Bible. The versification comes in the Reformation, the big numbers, the little numbers. Secondly, there's no full stops. you know, grammatical English. Oh, by the way, it wasn't in English to start with either. But just so you know, I think it's okay. Put a pencil, if you've got a pencil now, put an underline under the word inclined in ESV. Here's why that's special. There is no other God of this world, nothing else you can live for, who does that. Who in your fragility, or when the rain is on the roof, drowning you out, or perhaps even more so, you see this when someone's in their hospital bed. When someone is in their hospital bed and laid low, and they are so ill, they are so sick, how loud can they speak? They hardly have the voice. And so when someone's laying low in their hospital bed, and you see that compassionate companion who sits with them, what does the compassionate companion do when the person laying low in their hospital bed whimpers and whispers for help? Does the companion say, what? Speak up. I can't hear you. What is wrong with you? No. The compassionate companion inclines their ear. That's what God does for us. We so easily build up an image of God that is false. We build up an image of God that he's like us, as in he's made in our image. We do this all the time. It's called idolatry. And so we think God is like me and I'll fashion him in my mind in my image. So if I'm into whatever I'm into, God must be into it too. If I'm passionate most of all about sport, God must be passionate most of all about sport. Well, how would you know? I love sport, but how would you know? You need to listen to him and his word. As we do, we see a real picture of God and that his word, he's what God says. He is not like us. He's not like us who just gets a bit frustrated and says, I want you to speak up. I want you to do better. I want you to get to me. You're not coming to me. I'm frustrated. He's not like us. God is not like us. God is not like us. I sent you the text message. Why haven't you replied to me within an hour? I sent you the email. You haven't replied to me within 24 hours. I did this. Why? God is not like us. God speaks to us and then he inclines his ear to us. The verb incline could be translated as stretches out. He extends by his grace to us, to people who are drowning in the ocean, who do not have the energy or ability to reach up and grab to him, he comes. To those who are lying in their deathbed and all they can do is give a whimper of a whisper, That's as much as they can cry out. He inclines his ear. That is the God you can love. Because if God was the opposite, if he was like us, if he was like me and my sinful nature, if he was demanding me to do better, me to speak louder, me to measure up to his standards of communication, if he was requiring that, I wouldn't love that. These are the gods we make for ourselves. These are the images of God we have. Friends, you want to hear God speak? Open a Bible. You want to see God? Look in the scriptures. What does he look like? He looks like this. Compassionate, kind, gracious, merciful. righteous and yet redeeming, rescuing and inclining his ear to you. All you need is a whimper of a whisper and God hears your prayer. Oh, if you know him like that, you will, you'll love him. Wouldn't you? What else could you respond with? I love the Lord, because He has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy, because He inclined His ear to me. Therefore I will call on Him as long as I live, be that twenty-four hours, or twenty-four years, or twenty-four seconds. I will call on Him, because He loves like that. Verse 3 The snares of death encompassed me. The pangs of Sheol laid hold on me. God is the one who sees our trouble. Now, at this point, some of us wonder, what's the context of this Psalm? And the context is tricky because unlike other Psalms, which might have verse zero in the context statement, this doesn't have a content statement, but it's very similar to Psalm 18. I know you're doing your best Cameron, you're doing great. I'll do my best too. Beautiful rain, we love having a bit of refreshing rain. We don't know the context. It could be King David. But in the end, this is a psalmist that anyone could pray. It could be David, it could be someone else, but it's definitely you and I. Why? Because look at verses three and four. All of us know the experience of facing death. Either we've met it, with our loved ones, the loss of our loved ones, or we know that one day we will experience it if Christ has not returned. We all live day by day knowing that death is coming. Our bodies have an expiry day. And to know that, and to know it's closer than you thought it was, to have that experience, is to know that it feels, verse 3, like it encompasses you. Now the psalmist could well be talking about a time in their life when it's a physical death. But we know, as the psalmist writes, there's something worse than a physical death, and that's spiritual death. This is why people who die without knowledge of Christ or what is next, die in a state of experiencing this hopelessness, unless they try and believe some sort of lie about life after death. The saddest thing I've seen, often at funerals, and I do a lot of them, the saddest things I experience at funerals as a minister, often, Funerals are people that look after churches in our region that probably don't have a minister. And so I'm there as interim moderator. They perhaps were once married in that church building or their loved one was buried in the cemetery associated with the church. So they call on the minister. So I go, I meet with the family. I talk about Jesus. Sometimes the family are acknowledged that they need Jesus. And we talk about that. Often the saddest thing about funerals is when you have this funeral, and there's not a word of hope more of it is a pretense a pretending that everything's fine that death is beautiful that doesn't last beyond the graveside part of the service because the hardest part of the service is not in the church building hearing the eulogy, the giving of thanks for the person's life. It's at the graveside when they flick that switch and the coffin goes down. And what we would want to know in that moment is, is there hope? Does someone have something to say about what's next? That is the hope the psalmist holds on to. And the hope that he holds on to, I want you to notice, look at verse 4. I'll use hand signals. We're going to verse 4. And you'll see in verse 4, the psalmist uses the personal name of God. translated or transliterated for us by using uppercase LORD. L-O-R-D. There's a reason for that. It's translating a word we know as the Tetragrammaton. You say, what? Sounds like coming to Star Wars, like the Millennium Falcon or something. Well, the Tetragrammaton is four consonants, four Hebrew consonants. And when we have our Masoretic Texts or our Hebrew Bibles, we didn't exactly know what was the vowels around that for a long time, but we had these vowel pointings and we tried. It could be pronounced Yehovah or Yahweh. We just don't know exactly. And so scholars are careful not to make that the be all and end all of how you say the word, particularly because here's what's coming next. So if you want to look at that, look at John McLean's written article as a scholar at Christ College. What you'll notice is, the translators are doing what was tradition for the Old Testament. They didn't pronounce it anyway. They often shied away from saying the personal name of God and they used the word, Hebrew word, Adonai, which means Lord. And they would say that. because they held the reverence of the personal name of God in such high esteem. They still knew him personally by name. God reveals himself by name all throughout the scriptures. Most notably famous, he does this for Moses, the burning bush. For Yahweh, Yehovah, there's four consonants with a vowel pointing, could mean those names pronounced, but what we know it means is what God has revealed to us. His name means I am who I am, or I will be who I will be. And so we have here this personal name use in verse four, oh Lord. And lastly, how do we see it used in the New Testament? Every time Jesus himself speaks of the personal name of God, how does he say it? He says, Lord. And then he teaches us even to call him Father. Why is it important? And I hope you got that in the last couple of minutes. Because this is personal. The psalmist is personally thankful for personal deliverance by God who is personal to him, who relates to him. The psalmist says, praise. We see praise the Lord. It's, it's literally hallelujah. It's hallelujah, praise, you know, Jehovah, Yahweh, whatever it could be pronounced as. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. What does it mean to praise the Lord? From those who only have whimpered whispers, it can even just mean, I love Jesus. That's praising the Lord. Of course it can mean singing songs, like we do at church. It can mean preaching, speaking, giving your testimony, answering profession of faith, in the marketplace, identifying as a Christian publicly. It is simply saying, the Lord, His name is lifted up. He is Lord. And the Psalmist says, I praise the Lord because He's delivered my soul. Notice this, the Psalmist is not fixated on just this life. You've probably heard the saying, you know, we don't want to just pray car park prayers. Have you heard of car park prayers? You know, Oh Lord, I'm in Woolworths car park, Epsom of all places. That's the hardest one I find. Vainly ever says, we're running a milk and it's three o'clock, five o'clock in the afternoon. Can you go to Woolies and get some milk? I'm like, I got flashbacks. That car park, boy. And so we go to car parks and pray for a car park. There's nothing wrong with that. And the Lord does provide. Or it might be a bit more serious. We need to pray there's milk on the shelves in the most recent strike. Or it might be more serious than that. We need to pray that we've got enough money for milk. Or it might be more serious than that. We need to pray for our daily bread. That's getting serious. It might be more serious than that. We need to pray that we get better from our head cold. Or it might get more serious than that. We need to pray for a better diagnosis. Or it might get more serious than that. We need to pray for our loved one who has a terminal sickness, that the Lord heals them. And he might, but he might not. It's good and right to pray those prayers, but here's what happens for us if we take our eyes off who is the Lord. If we forget who are we and what we're like. We miss praying the most urgent prayer. Deliver my soul. It's my soul. That's what needs to be safe. It's my very soul, my life. This physical body is expiring. The other day it was Amy's birthday. So we tried to take a selfie. I mean, what I mean, I tried to take the selfie and it wasn't working. And so Amy took the camera and I said, let's take a selfie and you know, celebrate your birthday. That's what we all do these days. So she took the picture. I looked at it. I look like I'm your dad. Like I'm just, I'm getting older rapidly. My hair has turned gray and it's just, yeah, it's goodness. It just rapidly changes. And we get so wrapped up in the rapid nature of that, that that's all we get focused on. We forget actually, this is a reminder that what is eternal matters more, my soul. And so the Psalmist thanks the Lord for deliverance of his soul. He calls on the name of the Lord personally. Calling on the name of the Lord has a history in the Bible. Every time someone calls on the name of the Lord, that is associated most usually with public worship. Because why? They're praising the Lord in public, calling on the name of the Lord in public. You can trace this back, Genesis 4, you go back to Genesis, in Genesis of course, Genesis 1 and 2, you see there's creation, there's Adam and Eve, and we are walking, our ancient grandparents are walking with the Lord, in fellowship with him, having public worship every day. Of course, sin enters the world, breaks everything, messes everything up, and it breaks relationship personally with God. It is God then who is gracious to us in amongst the carnage of death and destruction that sin causes. God is gracious to us. God inclines his ear to us. He stretches to us. He comes to us by his saving grace. And then we see this in Genesis 4.26. We see in Genesis 4.26, after sadly Abel is killed by his brother Cain we see then other sons are born and Genesis 4.26, to Seth also was born a son and he called his name Enosh and at that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord that is the first act of public worship where people are calling on the name of the Lord in front of others calling on him gathered in public worship thankful. Why are they thankful? Because of all the death and destruction around them, they know God is going to save our souls. God is going to do this because the reliability of God, his character, is reliably gracious. We see this in verses five to seven. Gracious to the Lord and righteous, our God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple. When I was brought low, when I was brought low, he saved me. And so again, he says it's imperative in verse 7, return, oh my soul, to your rest. This is all about his internal need for Jesus to save him. And of course, he doesn't see Jesus yet, but we'll see Jesus at the end of this sermon, because this Psalm shows us Christ. But he knows what we saw in our call to worship in Exodus 34, verse 6. Remember, the Lord passed. by Moses, it's the second time the tablets of stone are being made, and in that moment the Lord passes by and says, the Lord, the Lord, again, personal name of God, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding steadfast love and faithfulness, this is God, this is his character, he is reliably gracious, perfect in righteousness, he does judge sin, but he's the one who deals with it in and on himself. If you know this as your Lord, if you know him that he's saved you, that he's gracious towards you, then you would say in verse 7, with that imperative, return, O my soul, every day to your rest. Rest in him. What causes us to be so busy and buzz in our minds and hearts, be so distracted and look for things that provide the next point of entertainment, the next possibility of hope. It's good and okay to be entertained. It's good and okay to enjoy the things of life. But this is where the psalmist says my real joy, my real rest is going to be in him. And then he says, notice this, I love how he says, the Lord preserves the simple. Whenever someone's getting baptized, I think I just, I've seen this over the years, there's always this feeling of, it's got to be perfect. It's going to be perfect. And then people can often feel like, well, I'll have my baptism. Now I'm not perfect. Like I thought it was going to change me. And I've actually, I have a friend of mine who's been baptized and we don't do second baptisms. I'll explain why later for one of the morning tea. We, we're not Anabaptists. We don't do second baptisms. Very good reason. I have a friend who was baptized and then sinned and so asked to be baptized again and then sinned six times. Now, if you're the minister of that church, you're going to be asking some theological questions about, do you understand what's going on here? Aside from that, that is a symptom of what's going on in our hearts, isn't it? See, we think my baptism is going to be perfect. And we think, well, I've sinned now. I've got to get baptized again. Because what are we thinking? We're thinking this, this is what makes me clean. This is what delivers my... It's not. Because what is this a sign of? Ironically enough, our baptism doesn't have to be perfect. Why? Because baptism is a sign of what? God's grace. That's the point. It's a sign that God is gracious to imperfect people, to sinners, who make a mess of it on a daily basis. When you remember your baptism, if you're baptized, I mean not yet, come and talk to us about faith in Jesus, but if you remember your baptism, whenever that was, you remember, that's right, God is gracious to me a sinner. You remember, that's right, I'm often wrong, I'm always weak, Christ welcomes me. When you remember your baptism, remember God is gracious to you, which means every time you remember your own sin, every time you reflect upon the day or the moment, what can we do? Verse seven, return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. I think we get so caught up in our own mistakes and foolishness, our own sin. We get so caught up. I do this too. I get this by experience. We get so caught up that we just forget the gospel of grace. The whole point is that Christ welcomes sinners. Jesus says in the gospel accounts, synoptic gospels, he's not coming to call the words who think I'm already right and sorted out. Thanks very much. I'm righteous. I'm okay. I don't need this. This is all boring. I don't need this. I've read the Bible. Jesus is not interested in that. Jesus says, you're not really interested in grace. You're not really interested in the gospel. Jesus says, I've come to call the sick, sinners. People who know they need grace within say to their soul, their self, go to Jesus, go to him. And that's the simple. The simple are like that. I can be like that. The simple Psalm 119, we read the unfolding of your word gives light and imparts understanding to the simple. So if you didn't know that, or you needed to know that again, that's good. Cause God's word's got you covered. Proverbs 1 verse 4, God's word gives prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth. Here's the good news. If you feel like you're a slow learner, well, welcome to this church. The word learner means disciple. We're all slow learners. But you see, verse 7, slow learners can do that every day because God loves slow learners. He's gracious towards them. The character of God is that he's reliably gracious and he delivers us. But the Lord is our deliverer, we see in verses 8 to 11. If we have delivered my soul from death, verse 8, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, we live in a world of instability. Where will people go for their stability? It's so predictable watching the news. I have the news on my app. So, you know, usually most mornings I check the weather, I check the news. And the news often becomes, it's not just what's happened, but it becomes commentary on what we think is what's happening. So there's lots of opinion pieces, lots of commentary. Not just what the president in America did, but what we think the president in America is doing, what's going on. So there's lots of social commentators. And what I find interesting is the social commentary on the news now is like predictable. Like, you could probably write next week's articles this week, and it'll probably be pretty close to matching up. Predictable before an election. We're going to place our hopes, whether we're conservative or we're progressive, left or right. Our hope is when this person comes in, then life's going to be great. We're going to punish our enemies and achieve our dreams. Everything's great. It's predictable. It's like every election. Every election is like you say to people, you didn't realize you thought that last time. and you are bitterly disappointed. This is the problem with politics. It never actually wins. It succeeds in managing temporal affairs for a little while, and then it actually doesn't. It just gets frustrated, and politicians get frustrated. It's why they spend their time in question time not being nice to each other, I think. That is all a symptom of this. Where do people think their deliverance is? Where do you Where is your next hope of life's change, of you? You think you get this career, this job. I used to work in uni ministry, and university students, I was a uni student once, I did this. Once I get to uni, then everything will be great. That's what my hope will be, those four years of university life. or five or six or seven, depending how many degrees you want to change. But as you do that, then you go, wow, I'm just so sick of uni. Once I get out of uni, then when I get a job, then life's going to be great. And then you get out of uni and get a job and you go, oh, this is kind of like, this is not what I expected. I'm going to do this thing called tax. A third? And then you realize that life has responsibilities and you've got to do things for yourself. Mom and dad don't do it anymore. What? No, because they're fragile and on their beds, and you need to incline your ear to them. Do you see? We spend our lives on this treadmill of hope, of deliverance, of the next thing that's going to make us happy, and it just doesn't. It disappoints us. And at worst, it devastates us. But not if you trust in the Lord. because he delivers your soul from death, your eyes from tears, your feet from the stumbling. You can still weep in this life, but if you know the Lord, it's sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. It's joy through tears, because you know, verse nine, you will walk in the land of the living. Even when you feel, verses 10 to 11, I believe when I spoke, this is quoted from 2 Corinthians 4, we were there last year. The Apostle Paul speaks about his affliction in that chapter that Michelle read for us. His affliction was so great in chapter 1 of 2 Corinthians, he said, I despaired of life itself. Do you know what that's like? Do you know what it's like to despair of life itself? I don't know where else to go. that the person who knows the Lord can despair and look to him and know that he sees my despair, he hears my cry, and he will deliver my soul. He is our deliverer. And so we can depend upon him. And by his grace, we can express our gratitude. Today is 12 years of Reforming Church. We're not a big deal kind of church. If you are hoping we were, and you're new to us, or if you think we are, and you're new to us, just get to know us. We're not a big deal kind of church. But we are a church that sees Jesus as a big deal. We're a church that sees we've got nothing else, no one else to deliver our soul. The treadmill of constant hopes and disappointments that we experience in life actually are seen as the great reality for what they are. There is no one like Jesus. Now you might be looking at Psalm 116 and saying, where's it mention Jesus? That's good. That's good Bible reading. Because hear how this psalm, see how this psalm points to Jesus. It points to Jesus by seeing how gratitude is expressed in gathered worship of what Jesus has done. Have a look there in verses 12 to 19, that extensive conclusion. What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me? In other words, how can I give thanks? How can I do it? How can I express my gratitude for his grace? How can we do that today reforming? And you see the answer there, verse 13 onwards. I will lift up the cup of salvation, call on the name of the Lord. I'll pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people. Do you notice how he's doing it? How can we give thanks? It's gathered worship. It's gathered worship friends. It's getting together as a church, celebrating baptism, having morning tea, having coffee together, asking the new person, oh, how'd you come to find this church? Even moreover, do you know Jesus? How'd you become a Christian? You could ask me if you don't really want to feel brave enough to tell your own story. How'd you become a Christian? I'm happy to tell you, as you guess, I'm pretty wordy. So you can ask anyone. You can ask and get encouragement and pray for one another. It's gathered worship. And when you consider what gathered worship is and what the church is, it's one another appointing each other to Jesus is where we're going to get our joy. For those who are eight months at sea together, I can imagine there would have been moments when people would have been disappointed. This is not what I expected. I signed up for a cruise ship. Well, we know that most of them are convicts, so it's not what they signed up for. But for them who came to a new land, for us who thought, yeah, it'd be great to see a church reach new people with Jesus, with the gospel of Jesus, we might find ourselves disappointed. Church is always going to have disappointments, though. That's also the point. A church is a sanctuary for sinners, a hospital for the sick who come in on their beds and can only whimper and a whisper and cry out to Jesus and do that together and get help from one another together. A church is full of people who know personal deliverance and salvation, who then look to one another and think that's what you need most of all. We're running Hope Explored starting next week, Sunday evenings, 5 p.m., three Sundays. And tonight as we pray at our prayer service at 5 p.m., we're gonna pray for people because as I look around, even at church, I know there's people that come to our church, you're so welcome, who are not yet trusting in Jesus. Our prayer, our big plea is the Lord would change everything for you. You need your soul to be delivered from death. We don't know when it is. You board a plane, it gets hit by a helicopter. The people on that flight over Washington did not get up that day, put their clothes on, get their plane ticket, listen to all the instructions about what if something goes wrong and expect that that would be their last. Most people don't. From 16-year-olds to 60-year-olds, most people do not know the day when it is the day their body will perish and their soul, they themselves, their very life, they will meet the Lord. Will they meet Him? Will you meet Him as judge or Savior? We are a church full of people who celebrate that He's our Savior. and do dearly want others to know that too for themselves, to know Him personally as their Lord and Saviour. To know the One who is Jesus, and how does this psalm point to Jesus? We read in one of our cross-reference readings from Mark 14. Because if you're thinking, well, I can cry out but God doesn't hear my prayers, remember this. God is not aloof, he's not distant because Jesus is the one that cries out and he knows what it is to even cry out in desperation for deliverance and yet have his prayers answered in the way that God would answer prayer. Look at this, Jesus is the one who prays for deliverance in that garden, that second garden, the garden of Gethsemane. He knows his own experience of his father who cares, yet he asks that this cup of wrath will be removed from him. The cup of wrath, though, goes on Jesus at the cross. The cup of wrath that other Psalms describe as the judgment of God goes on Christ, but it doesn't go on us. What do we get? Look at verse 13. We get to lift up the cup of salvation. Jesus has taken the cup of wrath, so we get to have salvation. Jesus, the one who experienced the snares of death that encompassed him. Jesus, the one who calls in the name of the Lord. who died for us, who can now do that too. This is Jesus. This is the Lord. Not only can you know his name personally, you can know him personally. You can trust him. Our prayer for the next 12 years, or whatever the Lord gives Reforming Church, is that more and more people would. That we would. that we would continue to trust in Jesus, knowing he has delivered our soul. Yes, we will pray for people that he heals them from cancer and all sorts of sickness. But we even know in the Bible, 2 Kings 20, King Hezekiah had a great sickness and prayed that he wouldn't die, still dies. But he knows, we know, it is the one who died for us that gives us a life that's more alive than we know here. It is Jesus. Jesus' death on that cross was precious in the sight of the Lord. His death doesn't happen outside of God's sovereign grace. He delivers us and he does it because he loves us. So we can love the Lord with gratitude because of his grace. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your grace to us. We know that we all have this in common, that we are sinners and sufferers. We're all snared by sin. One day, death, physical death, will encompass us. And we pray that our friends, our family, that we would continue to trust in Jesus. Find our rest in Jesus. that when we gather in public worship, we would sing and praise the name of Jesus, encourage one another to look to Jesus, that all glory be going to Christ. That in this life of desperation, we know that we can depend on him, thank him and worship him for all his benefits to us. And so we pray this prayer of thankfulness in Jesus name. Amen.