Our scripture reading for today is Psalm 76. So if you turn with me in the word of God to Psalm 76, we will read this together, our ongoing series, Summer in the Psalms and the Psalms of Asaph, Dealing Honestly with God. And here God is coming to the rescue of his people and his people are responding to him in right worship and service. So let's hear God's word. This morning from Psalm 76, which is written to the choir master, with stringed instruments, a psalm of Asaph, a song. In Judah, God is known. His name is great in Israel. His abode has been established in Salem, his dwelling place in Zion. There he broke the flashing arrows, the shield, the sword, and the weapons of war, Selah. Glorious are you, more majestic than the mountains full of prey. The stout-hearted were stripped of their spoil. They sank into sleep. All the men of war were unable to use their hands. At your rebuke, O God of Jacob, both rider and horse lay stunned. But you, you are to be feared. Who can stand before you when once your anger is roused? From the heavens you uttered judgment. The earth feared and was still when God arose to establish judgment, to save all the humble of the earth. Selah. Surely the wrath of man shall praise you. The remnant of wrath you will put on like a belt. Make your vows to the Lord your God and perform them. Let all around him bring gifts to him who is to be feared, who cuts off the spirit of princes, who is to be feared by the kings of the earth. Let's pray. Father in heaven, You are the one true God. You have made yourself known to your people and you call us to a humble and holy fear and a willing and obedient service to you because of who you are and because of what you have done to rescue us, to save the humble of the earth. Father, as we hear from your word this morning, we pray that you would be pleased by your Holy Spirit to prepare our hearts to receive it, to speak to us, to write your word on our hearts for your glory, for our good, for the building up of your church, for the advancing of your kingdom, for the name of Jesus in the world, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Well, I want to start this morning with a very simple and very direct question. And this is it. Do you know God? Do you know God? Like I said, it's a very simple and a very direct question, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily easy to answer rightly. Because I think most people in the world think they know God on some level, and that is that Almost everybody in the world has some concept of God that comes into mind. If you say to most people in the world, God, they kind of understand what you mean, right? Even atheists and agnostics have an idea in their mind of who God is, even though they don't believe in him. But the problem is, do they really know this God that they say they don't believe in? A while back I heard something from a Christian apologist that I thought was actually very clever and helpful. He said he's adopted a new strategy of how to talk to people who say they don't believe in God. And so if someone tells him they don't believe in God, instead of trying to immediately argue for the existence of God, he says first, well, what do you mean by God? Why don't you tell me about the God that you don't believe in? And most of the time they'll answer back with something like, well, I don't believe in any old guy who's sitting up there in the sky looking down on the world and judging everybody for doing bad stuff or for trying to have a fun time. Or they might say something like, well, I don't believe in any silly magical genie who created the world by magic, you know, and who runs everything. And the Christian apologist looks at them and says, well, you and I have something in common then, because I don't believe in that God either. And so then he begins to explain to them about the God of the Bible, the God who is an infinite, eternal, and unchangeable spirit, and who is perfect in all of his ways, who is from everlasting to everlasting, who is not some old guy or some magical genie or any other mythical creation of man's imagination. And it turns out these atheists and agnostics are actually fascinated to hear about the God that they thought they were rejecting and they didn't even really know. at all. But, you know, it's not just atheists and agnostics who can think they know God and don't. Even deeply religious people, even devoutly religious people, can think they know God and don't actually. This was the problem of the religious leaders in Jesus' day. Jesus had to confront the religious leaders in his day, in John chapter 8, and he said to them, you know neither me nor my father. If you knew me, you would know my father also." Now, Jesus' father was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Yahweh of Israel. He's the God that these religious leaders claimed to worship and serve in their temple. But Jesus said to them, you don't know me, even though I'm right in your midst, and you don't know God, even though you claim him as your God. Now, what was the evidence that these religious leaders did not know God? Well, it's the same evidence that the atheists and agnostics today do not know God, and that is there is no fear of God before their eyes. They do not walk in the fear of the Lord. Obviously, atheists and agnostics don't walk in the fear of the Lord because they think they can reject God, refuse to believe in him, refuse to glorify him, and suffer no consequences for it. They mock God pretty openly, right? But even the religious leaders in Jesus' day did not have fear of God, even though they claimed to have fear of God. In reality, what they had was a professional religiosity that elevated them to a higher standing in the eyes of the people, but there was no fear of God before their eyes because they took the Son of God, who was walking among them and who attested to his divinity by great miracles that he performed. They took him and they rejected him. They denied him. They had him arrested and crucified. They spat on him. And that is not the fear of the Lord to take God's Messiah and put him to death. So many people think they know God, but they don't know God and they're Lack of knowledge of God is shown by a lack of fear of God. But Psalm 76 is our guide to knowing God, fearing God, Serving God because Psalm 76 walks through and it tells us how God is known how he has shown himself How we are to respond to God in fear and in service and what the fear of the Lord looks like now I say fear of the Lord. I've used the word fear several times and that's very Unpopular these days. I'd say that the fear of the Lord is probably on the same level of popularity as the last psalm that we talked about with the wrath of God, right? People don't want to hear about wrath and about fear. Even our Westminster Confession says we don't serve God out of a slavish fear. But there is a right fear of the Lord. The Bible teaches us a central truth that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And that to be in a right relationship with God is to walk in humble fear before him. But what is the fear of the Lord? Well, we're going to get to that as well, particularly when we get to verses 7 through 10. But let's begin in verse 1 with how God is known. Verses 1 to 6. In Judah, God is known. His name is great in Israel. His abode has been established in Salem, his dwelling place in Zion. There he broke the flashing arrows, the shield, the sword, and the weapons of war, Selah. Glorious are you! more majestic than the mountains full of prey. The stout-hearted were stripped of their spoil. They sank into sleep. All the men of war were unable to use their hands. At your rebuke, O God of Jacob, both rider and horse lay stunned." Now, in these opening six verses of Psalm 76, we see two things. We see first the place where God has made himself known, and second we see the way in which God has made himself known. So there is a place where God makes himself known, and there is a way in which God makes himself known. Verses 1 to 2 tell us of the place, and then verses 3 to 6 tell us of the way. The place, Judah. Israel, Salem, Zion. Four specific location names, right? It's very narrow, it's very specific, and that way it's very politically incorrect. God doesn't say, everybody can just go outside and roll around in the grass and chase butterflies and they can just know God, right? Even though God is seen in the beauty of his creation, God is known in a very specific place among a very specific people. Judah. Israel. These are the people that God had chosen for himself, people that he had entered into a covenant with, people that he had chosen to say, I'm going to reveal myself to you, I'm going to make myself known to you, by giving you my word. He gave him his word through Moses and the prophets. And then he established his worship in their midst through the word and through worship. And Salem, verse two, is a reference to Jerusalem. It's just the shorter word of Jerusalem. By the way, this word Salem is related to Shalom, which means peace. That's the ancient name of the city. In Genesis 14, we meet Amalchizedek, whose name is king of righteousness, and he is the king of Salem, the king of peace, right? Salem was the city of peace because it was high on a hill and had Impenetrable walls and no one could conquer it until King David conquered it but it was peace and then Yahoo, which is Yahoo Shalom Yahoo means he will be seen or he will or he will see to it and that comes from Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac and but it's it's the name of Jerusalem and His abode has been established in Salem. That's where the Ark of the Covenant was. That's where the temple was built. His dwelling place in Zion, and Zion just refers to the mountain where the temple sat. So how does this translate to us today? A lot of people would say it has to be Jerusalem. You have to go to Jerusalem. You have to go to the Western Wall. You have to go to the Temple Mound because that's where God is. Well, that's not what Jesus said. Jesus said in John chapter 4 the time is coming when neither on this mountain in Samaria nor in Jerusalem will people worship God for God is seeking worshipers who will worship him in spirit and in truth. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. So Jesus himself told us that the time was coming when Jerusalem would not be the place of worship anymore but God would be worshipped by his people in spirit and in truth and then later Jesus said in John 14 6 I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the father but through So, the place, the way that we worship God is through Jesus, not through an earthly temple, but through him who is our heavenly temple, who is our heavenly great high priest. And then Jesus also said, wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them. So, where is God revealed today? God is revealed through Jesus Christ as his people are gathered together to worship him. In other words, God is revealed through the church, gathered in worship in particular, where the people of God gather together. And that's why in New Testament language, in Ephesians 2 and 1 Peter 2, the church is called the new and living temple. And we are stones being built into that temple. And Jesus is the chief cornerstone. So we are the dwelling place of God on earth, the church. Does that blow you away? It should blow you away to think about it. We, the church gathered in worship, even in this online strange format, we, the church gathered in worship are the dwelling place of God. This is where God is. known. That's how we translate the Psalms into New Testament languages, by realizing that it's not an earthly temple in an earthly city, but it's the spiritual temple of the church and the heavenly Jerusalem where we actually gather for worship on the Lord's day as the church. So that's where God is known. But how is God known? How does God reveal himself among his people? Well, the short answer in verses three to six is that God reveals himself as the great deliverer of his people, as the great deliverer of his people. Verses 3 to 6 tell the story of God winning a great deliverance for his people from an opposing, oppressing army. Most Bible scholars believe that the event in mind in verses 3 to 6 was the destruction of the army of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, in the days of Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah. Now, we'll get to that. That happened in about the year 701 BC. But I want to tell you three stories of how God made himself known through the miraculous deliverance of his people. And then they're all going to lead up to the great deliverance of God's people, where God is supremely known. So our first story of deliverance, we go back to about the 1400s BC, and we go to Egypt. God's people held in bondage as slaves in Egypt. Moses going before Pharaoh and saying, let my people go. And God leading his people out of Egypt in the Passover as God went through the land of Egypt and struck down the firstborn sons. But all the houses that were covered by the blood of the Lamb were protected from the avenger and they were that God passed over those houses in that Passover. And then they went out by night and they took all their things with them and they were able to plunder the Egyptians and take their gold and silver. But then God did something very unusual in Exodus. It's one of the most strange instances in God's leading of his people. You see, God does lead his people. There are some teachers of the Bible, though, who would tell you that because God leads his people, that means you're never going to have any problems. You're never going to run into any difficulties. And that if you ever do run into problems and difficulties, it must be because you're not following the leading of God. But this isn't what the Bible teaches us. The Bible teaches us that in the Exodus, God led his people right to the shores of the Red Sea, and then he stopped them there. So they were on the shores of the Red Sea, the Red Sea was deep and wide, they couldn't get across, and pursuing them behind them was the Egyptian army. The most powerful and the most successful army in the world at the time, had the Israelites pinned against the Red Sea. For the Egyptian army, this was like the military equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. It was just as easy as can be. They were gonna plunder the Israelites. They were gonna get all their gold and silver back. They were gonna recapture them as slaves. Victory was going to belong to the Egyptians, only we know that's not how the story ended. God parted the Red Sea. The Israelites walked through on dry land. And then Pharaoh paused. And then the Egyptians pursued. They thought, well, if it works for the Israelites, it must work for us. But they didn't realize that it was the hand of the Lord. And so God miraculously swept the Red Sea over the Egyptian army and defeated them. The largest, most powerful, most successful army in the world was completely destroyed by God. And not a single Israelite had to raise a single weapon and fight for a single minute because God rescued them. watching this scene of power, judgment, and deliverance unfold before their eyes. Exodus 15 tells us Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying, I will sing to the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously. the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will praise him. My Father's God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a man of war. The Lord is his name. Pharaoh's chariots and his host he has cast into the sea. And his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea. The floods covered them. They went down into the depths like a stone. Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power, Your right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy. In the greatness of your majesty, you overthrow your adversaries. You send out your fury. It consumes them like stubble. At the blast of your nostrils, the waters piled up. The floods stood up in a heap. The deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, I will pursue. I will overtake. I will divide the spoil. My heart My desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword. My hand shall destroy them. But you blew with your wind, and the sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters. Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? You stretched out your right hand. The earth swallowed them. You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed. You have guided them by your strength to your holy abode." That's Exodus 15, 1 to 13. Now, this song shows us that it was in the miraculous deliverance of his people that God made himself known, and that the people of Israel came to know God. The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. This is my God, and I will praise him. You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed." So, God is known through the miraculous deliverance of his people. Generations later, after Israel was settled in the Promised Land, in the era of the Judges, Israel was again under threat, under oppression by an opposing army. This time it was the Midianites, a people who lived to the east across the Jordan River. They came into the land. Judges 6 tells us they would come up with their livestock and their tents. They would come up like locusts in number. Both they and their camels could not be counted. so that they laid waste the land as they came in. And Israel was brought very low because of Midian, and the people of Israel cried out for help to the Lord." So the Midianites were this oppressive army. They and their camels were like locusts in the land. They could not be numbered. God, again, came to the rescue of his people as they cried out for help to him. He raised up Gideon. Gideon the Judge gathered together Israel, gathered together an army, and he got an army of 32,000 people to face the Midianites. Now, the Israelites would have been outnumbered more than 3 to 1, probably, at this point, but God said, that's too many people, Gideon. You have so many people that you will think that you won this battle, and I need you to know that I won the battle. I need you to trust me. So tell everybody who's afraid to go home." And so Gideon said, anybody who's afraid, go home. 22,000 people left, and 10,000 people remained with Gideon. Now they would be outnumbered more than 10 to 1, but God said, Gideon, that's still too many people. I don't want Israel to think that they can deliver themselves. I want them to know me and trust me and fear me. And so God showed Gideon how to go through his army and get them down still further till he had only 300 men. But God used those 300 men against more than 100,000 Midianites because God put fear into the hearts of the Midianites and they ran in terror and Gideon and his 300 men pursued them and overtook them until the kings were captured and killed. God again worked deliverance, mighty deliverance for his people. And now we come to the third and final Old Testament deliverance and that's the one that's in the background here in Psalm 76, probably, we don't know for sure. But in the 700s BC, hundreds of years after Gideon, Assyria arose as the great world power. So not Egypt, not Midianites, but Assyria. The Assyrians were the great world power, and in fact, they were such a great world power that they conquered all their neighbors and they built the largest empire the world had ever seen to that point. In the year 722 BC, they conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, the 10 tribes that split off to the north in Israel. They were conquered. They were defeated. Twenty-one years later, in the year 701, they devastated most of the fortified cities of Judah, and then they approached Jerusalem. They were going to lay siege to Jerusalem. Sennacherib was the king of Assyria and his Rabshakar, his military commander came with him and they threatened Jerusalem. They sent a letter to King Hezekiah and they said to him, you're trusting in the Lord to deliver you, but none of the gods of any of the other kingdoms were able to deliver them out of the hand of Sennacherib and his great army. So the Lord is not going to be able to deliver you. Hezekiah took that letter. He cried out to the Lord. He actually laid the letter before the Lord. He asked Isaiah the prophet to pray and this was God's answer to him Isaiah 37, thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria. He shall not come into this city, or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield, or cast up a siege mound against it. By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the Lord. For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David. And the angel of the LORD went out and struck down one hundred eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. And when the people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. Then Sennacherib, king of Assyria, departed and returned home and lived at Nineveh. 185,000 Assyrian troops killed in one night. And God didn't need the waters of the Red Sea? And God didn't need Gideon's 300 mighty men? The angel of the Lord just went and struck them down. In 1815, Lord Byron wrote a very famous poem called The Destruction of Sennacherib, telling the story of God's victory. And I'm going to read this poem to you. As you listen to it, I think Lord Byron probably heard Psalm 76, because Psalm 76, verse 6 says, At your rebuke, O God of Jacob, both rider and horse lay stunned. And as I said, most Bible scholars, Psalm 76 is connected to this destruction of Sennacherib. So listen to the language of the rider and the horse in the destruction of Sennacherib by Lord Byron. The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, and his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold. And the sheen of their spears was like the stars of the sea when the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. like the leaves of the forest when summer is green, that host with their banners at sunset were seen. Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay withered and strown. For the angel of death spread his wings on the blast, And he breathed in the face of the foe as he passed, And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved and forever grew still. And there lay the steed, with his nostril all wide, But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride, And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, As cold as the spray on the rock-beating surf. And there lay the rider, distorted and pale, With the dew on his brow and the rust in his mail, And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown. and the widows of Asher are loud in their wail, and the idols are broke in the temple of Baal, and the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, hath melted like snow at the glance of the Lord." This is the powerful deliverance of God's people by God. And I tell these stories because our God is the true Lord of history. He really did lead his people out of Egypt and drown Pharaoh's army. He really did deliver them from the hand of the Midianites using only 300 men. He really did strike down the Assyrian army, 185,000 in one night. But you know what? None of these deliverances can hold a candle to the great deliverance that God worked in Jerusalem, just outside of the city gates. Over 700 years after the Assyrian army lay dead in those hills, an itinerant preacher, the son of a carpenter, struggled to carry his cross as he was beaten and bloodied. And he walked out of the city gates and he went up a hill called Calvary. And there he was crucified in utter shame and humiliation by the Romans, the most powerful army in the world at that time. And yet, even as he hung on that cross, this simple, seemingly weak and defeated Galilean, he was winning the greatest victory for God's people that had ever been won. And that is why on that cross he could cry out, it is finished. All the battles for all of God's people for all time were finished because on that cross Jesus was winning for us the great deliverance. The great deliverance. Colossians 2 puts it this way, you who were dead In your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven all of our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. You see, everyone who looked at Jesus that day thought that Jesus was being put to open shame. But in fact, Jesus was putting the greatest evil army in the universe, the armies of the host of hell, the demons and principalities and powers that oppress and torment God's people. He was putting them to open shame because he was paying for all of our sins. He was canceling the debt against us. He was delivering us from sin and death. and hell forever. We recited that in our confession of faith earlier in the worship service, all that we've been freed from because of this great deliverance. And so we come to know God. We come to know God in the place where he reveals himself, which is among his people who are worshiping him in the name of Jesus. And God reveals himself as the great deliverer, the one who has worked deliverance for his people. And all of those Old Testament deliverances are but foreshadowings and anticipations of the greatest deliverance of all. And that is the deliverance that Jesus worked for us on the cross. So we come to know Jesus through the cross as we see the deliverance he brings to us. Now as God reveals himself among his people, as our great deliverer, what is our response? Verses 7 to 9 say, But you, you are to be feared. Who can stand before you when once your anger is roused? From the heavens you uttered judgment. The earth feared and was still. when God arose to establish judgment, to save all the humble of the earth." Fear. We are told that God is to be feared. We are told that the whole earth fears and is still. And then again in verse 12, we're told that God is to be feared by the kings of the earth. The right response to this deliverance is fear. But what does that fear look like? Well, look closely at what these verses are telling us. I'm going to put them back up on the screen for a minute, so that in case you don't have a Bible in front of you, we can look at them together. We see in verses 7 through 9 two things happening at once. We do see a trembling in awe and wonder at the anger and the judgment of God. But we also see the purpose of God in establishing his judgment in verse 9. When God arose to establish judgment, why? To save the humble of the earth. So the purpose of God's judgment that causes the earth to be still and to be in wonder, the purpose of God's judgment is to save the humble of the earth. Again, I think these verses are pointing us to the cross. Because when did God pour out his judgment in such a way that caused the sky to turn black, that caused the earth to shake, and that saved all the humble of the earth? It was at the cross. The cross was the place of God's judgment and deliverance, and so the right response to the cross is this holy fear of God. And if we understand both God's power and God's purpose, we will understand what the fear of the Lord is. Because the fear of the Lord is a right response to God's power and God's purpose. And that means the fear of the Lord has two components to it. There is a trembling in awe at the holiness, the justice, and the power of God. When God speaks, no one can answer Him. When God judges, no one can appeal His judgment. He is always right, and He is undefeated and undefeatable. And so there is a trembling awe at the power of God. But the purpose of God is to save. Not to condemn. The purpose of God is to save the humble of the earth, even at the cost of his own son. So when we see the purpose of God, our response is not just a trembling in awe, but also a love and a trust. And so the fear of God has two main components. A trembling in awe at the power of God. and a loving trust in the purposes of God. We see the might of God, and we realize we deserve condemnation. If God chose to call us to account for our sins, we would have no hope. If God chose to call us to account for our sins, we would have no hope. We are done. And yet, and yet, Jesus took our condemnation on himself. Jesus took our place willingly. He went to the cross, in our place, condemned, he stood. Hallelujah, what a savior. That ought to cause us to respond with love and trust. so the fear of God is the only right response to the deliverance of God and the fear of God is both a trembling in awe and a loving trust. It's not a slavish fear. You see, a slavish fear is only, I will obey you so that you won't punish me. And we're no longer under a sentence of condemnation. Romans 8, 1, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So it's not a slavish fear of, I will obey you if you will promise not to punish me. God has already removed all the punishment. And so the fear of God is a trembling awe that says, you are the holy, holy, holy judge of all the earth, and I deserve your condemnation, but you have spared me, and you have forgiven me, and you have adopted me, because your Son has taken my place on the cross, and I love you, and I trust you, and I want to serve you. And that's where Psalm 76 ends, with a call. Make your vows to the Lord, your God, and perform them. let all around him bring gifts to him who is to be feared make your vows to the lord your god here he's speaking to god's people the lord your god who has delivered you who has saved you make your vows to him perform them bring your gifts to him this is a call to worship It's a call for us to serve God with all that we are, to be that living sacrifice, which is our spiritual act of worship, to offer unto God the fruit of lips that acknowledge His name. We are to serve God in worship and in obedience, with love and trust and awe and wonder because of who He is and because of what He's done for us. That's the right response. That should be the response of our hearts. Trembling awe, loving trust, willing obedience from a thankful heart for all that God is and the great deliverance he has worked for us. But then Psalm 76 ends with a warning. Because we are prone to rebel, we need this final word of warning. And that is rebelling against this God is utter foolishness. We've already seen that he is undefeated and undefeatable, so what do we get when we rebel against God? Well, God cuts off the spirit of princes. God is the one who, even the most powerful people in the world, God can vanquish them. If you will stand against God, listen to me, please, if you're here this morning, gathered with us in worship, and you're listening to this, and you don't know God, and you haven't come to faith in Jesus Christ, and you're not thankful with awe and wonder and willing obedience for who God is and what he's done for you, if you're standing against God, if you're resisting God, if you're rebelling against God, you need to know that you cannot win. Rebelling against God puts you in the category not of being the humble of the earth whom he's saving, but of being the enemy of God who he's opposing. So which one are you going to be? Are you going to be the humble of the earth whom God is saving? Or are you going to be the arrogant, rebellious enemies of God whom he is conquering? The call to us from Psalm 76 is very clear. God is the one who is to be feared. We should tremble in awe before Him. We should lovingly trust Him, because He has established His judgment to save the humble of the earth. And He does save. And when He saves, it is for His glory and His renown, and it is for our good forever. This is the God we worship. This is the God we know. Do you know this God? Do you know Him? Is he your God? Is he your Savior? I pray that all of us who know him will worship him and will delight to tell others about him. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for being our God, for being our Savior, for establishing judgment in order to save the humble of the earth. And if we're humble, it's because you've humbled us by your grace, by your Spirit. So all praise to you, O God. All thanks to you, O God. Father, we need you to continue to grow us in the fear of you, in awe and wonder, in love and trust. Until that day when we see you face to face and worship you forever, thank you for loving us so much. Thank you for delivering us so powerfully. We praise you, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen.