Turn with me in your Bibles now to Isaiah 38, and let's read from God's Word. Isaiah 38 and 39. In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death, and Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, came to him and said to him, Thus saith the Lord, set thine house in order, for thou shalt die. and not live. Then Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall and prayed unto the Lord and said, Remember now, O Lord, I beseech Thee, how I have walked before Thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in Thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore. Then came the word of the Lord to Isaiah, saying, Go and say to Hezekiah, Thus saith the Lord, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears. Behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years, and I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city. And this shall be a sign unto thee from the Lord, that the Lord will do this thing that he has spoken. Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down, and the sundial of Ahaz, ten degrees backwards, so the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down. The writing of Hezekiah, king of Judah, when he had been sick, was recovered of his sickness. I said in the cutting off of my days I shall go to the gates of the grave. I am deprived of the residue of my years. I said I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord in the land of the living. I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world. Mine age is departed and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent. I have cut off like a weaver my life. He will cut me off with pining sickness. From day even to night wilt thou make an end of me. I reckon till morning that as a lion so will he break all my bones. From day even to night wilt thou make an end of me like a crane or a swallow. So did I chatter. I did mourn as a dove. Mine eyes failed with looking upward. O Lord, I am oppressed. Undertake for me. What shall I say? He has spoken unto me, and himself hath done it. I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul. O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit. So wilt Thou recover me and make me to live. Behold, for peace I had great bitterness, but Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption, for Thou hast cast off all my sins behind Thy back. For the grave cannot praise thee. Death cannot celebrate thee. They that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day. The father to the children shall make known thy truth. The Lord was ready to save me. Therefore, we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of the Lord. For Isaiah had said, let them take a lump of figs and lay it for a plaster upon the boil and he shall recover. Hezekiah also had said, what is the sign that I shall go to the house of the Lord? At that time, Merodach, Baladan, son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and present to Hezekiah, for he had heard that he had been sick and was recovered. And Hezekiah was glad of them and showed them the house of his precious things, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious ointment, all the house of his armor and all that was found in his treasures. There was nothing in his house nor in his dominion that Hezekiah showed them not. Then came Isaiah the prophet to King Hezekiah and said unto him, what said these men, from whence came they unto thee? And Hezekiah said, they are come from the far country unto me, even from Babylon. Then said he, what have they seen in thine house? And Hezekiah answered, all that is in mine house have they seen. There is nothing among my treasures that I have not showed them. Then said Isaiah to Hezekiah, hear the word of the Lord of hosts. Behold, the day has come that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store unto this day, shall be carried to Babylon, and nothing shall be left, saith the Lord. And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. Then said Hezekiah to Isaiah, good is the word of the Lord, which thou hast spoken. He said, moreover, for there shall be peace and truth in my days. And everybody's set. Let's now study the word of God. This is a short interlude in the book of Isaiah. Up through chapter 36, we had a series of sermons, effectively statements of prophecy, which is sort of like a sermon that Isaiah gave for a period of time. We believe that everything after chapter 40 is something that comes after, later on in his prophecy, in his prophetic career. But what we find here are a couple of chapters. We hit a couple of these chapters, 36 and 37 last week, 38 and 39 this week. These are chapters that refer to some of the history of the people of God at that time. And evidently it has to do with Hezekiah's life. And Hezekiah is an important figure. He's referred to in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles as well. And I'd like to talk a little bit about Hezekiah today. He's in a complex figure. He's a lot like a lot of us. So hopefully nothing strange about him, but he certainly represents ups and downs in life. Every man is on a journey. Some journeys have a disastrous end. Some survive, swim the river and make it to the celestial city. I believe that is what happened with this man Hezekiah. But chapter 39 references some negative things about him and will end on that, but also hopefully give you some hope about the life of Hezekiah, because chapter 38 refers to some good things about him. Again, he was a man who had a commitment to God. He had a commitment to God from the very beginning. If you back up to 2 Chronicles 29, you wanted to just kind of thumb through some of the history of Hezekiah, we get about three to four chapters on the life of Hezekiah from chapter 29 onwards in 2 Chronicles. And at the beginning, we have something of his testimony. Now, it is my heart According to Hezekiah, it is my heart to make a covenant with the Lord, the God of Israel, in order that his fierce anger may turn away from us. So this was his desire. He wanted to set the people of Israel in the right direction. They'd been going the wrong direction for quite some time. I'm sorry, the people of Judah. They'd been going the wrong direction for quite some time. There'd been ups and downs. The northern tribes were far worse off than the southern tribes. The southern tribes had a lot of bad kings, and I don't think there was any king quite like Hezekiah until you get to Hezekiah after King David. Hezekiah was a great man. He did some amazing things. And he turned to the people of God and said, Do not now be stiff-necked, as your fathers were, but yield yourselves to the Lord. Come to a sanctuary which He has consecrated forever. Serve the Lord your God, that His fierce anger may turn away from you. For if you return to the Lord, your brothers and your children will find compassion with their captors and return to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful and will not turn away His face from you if you return to Him." This was a call to repentance and reformation in the time of Hezekiah. He restored biblical worship. Probably the most important thing he did was bring everybody back to Jerusalem for the worship of God. Worship apparently had happened on a lot of high places. It had become a little more convenient to come into the worship of God. And this, of course, was something that Rabshakeh referred to, remember last week, when he said, hey, you guys now have to come all the way down to Jerusalem because this lousy King Hezekiah has destroyed worship all the way through the land of Judah, and he's destroyed the worship of Yahweh. And so, you know, Yahweh's obviously not on his side because he's in the wrong denomination. He's in the denomination of Moses and Joshua and all those other prophets, and that's not the right denomination. So Rabshakel is just trying to get a movement going against the work of Hezekiah when he came up against the city. Then as we read further in chapter 31 and verse 6, we find there was great joy in Jerusalem during the celebration of the Passover. For since the time of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, there had nothing like this happened in Jerusalem." So evidently for a long period of time, and I don't have the numbers in front of me, but my guess would be somewhere around 250 to 300 years, for a long period of time there was nothing really happening in terms of the religious fervor, the obedience to God, the obedience and the worship of God over a long, long period of time since the time of David and Solomon, but Hezekiah returned this worship to the people of God. If you want to kind of get a pulse on whether or not God's people are doing what God's people need to do, and whether there's a reformation going on, believe me, it has very, very little to do with Charles Finney's revivals. It has everything to do with what happens in the worship of God on a Sunday morning. If there's worship going on, as God has given it to us in His Word, and it's happening from the heart, and there is great joy in the worship of God, then there must be something of a reformation going on. So that's a good measure as to whether there's something happening in our day as well as at that time. And then now you look at chapter 32 of 2 Chronicles in verse 20, Hezekiah did throughout all Judah and he did what was good and right and faithful before the Lord his God. Every work that he undertook in the service of the house of God and in accordance with the law and the commandments, seeking his God, he did with all his heart and prospered. So there we have the picture of Hezekiah, a great king. A king that did amazing things. More than probably any king had done in terms of obedience to God since King David and King Solomon. And King Solomon's argument could be made that he set the wrong trajectory for the people of God. So now here we are. Hezekiah is on his deathbed. He's about ready to die. Isaiah has come to him and said, you're going to die. You're not going to live. You're going to die. This is a prophecy I've received from God. And he conveyed this to Hezekiah as Hezekiah laid on his deathbed. Now, when this happened, it's pretty hard to know exactly whether it happened before or after. Rabshakeh and the army of 140,000 had been killed, but my guess is it happened after God had killed the 140,000. Now it was Hezekiah's turn to die. And Hezekiah knew that death and life was in the hand of God. That's why, after he received the prophecy from Isaiah in verse 2, Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall and prayed unto the Lord. Because he knew that God had his life in the balance as he has all of our lives in the balance. And Hezekiah's prayer is basically this, I've been a good king, my ways have been perfect before God, I've had a pretty good record before you, shouldn't I get a little bit more of a lease in life? Shouldn't I get a little bit more time? And he was really fighting for time, and his arguments were based on his record, that he had a record. And by the way, the Word of God does bear out this. in terms of a good king versus a bad king. I think sometimes we have the impression that everybody is evil, therefore we need to call everybody evil, but I don't think that's the case at all. I think there are some kings that are good and some kings that are evil. There are some administrations that are good and some administrations that are evil. And when I look at what's going on in other nations, such as Egypt, and I find that you have a bunch of secular-esque college kids who get a worldview that is effectively socialist and existentialist up against a bunch of Muslims, up against an old guard dictatorship that did all kinds of evil things. And we find this revolution on the streets from, you know, three or four different parties, all of which are not godly, all of which are not Christians. I've told my listening audience, it's not for Christians to participate in revolutions. And I get a little pushback on that, because some people want to participate in revolutions, want to believe that one ungodly dictator is better than another ungodly dictator, but I don't believe that's the case. I believe there are men who are ungodly in their reign, and there are those who are godly in their reign, and the Bible bears this out, there are those whose hearts are inclined to the Word of God. Not that they were sinlessly perfect, but they are men who are effectively running by the agenda of God's Word and God's Law. And they set a trajectory for the people that they lead towards God's Law, not away from God's Law. So this is how you determine whether you have a good magistrate or a bad magistrate. Either their heart is inclined to God's Law, their agenda is set by God's Law. It's not, again, them making for a perfect life or a perfect society on planet Earth doesn't happen. It is them setting a trajectory towards God's law. And any legislator can be judged on whether or not They have set a trajectory towards God's law or away from God's law. Sometimes they back legislation that is a bit neutral and doesn't really do anything at all, except tyrannize the people even more. So we have that, but even in that case, I would say we have a heart that is not inclined towards God's law, but is against God's law. And so Hezekiah argues his case as the king of Israel, as one who has done something that is pretty good. He's had an administration that is right. and has set a direction towards reformation among the people of God. So he argues this case, and God relents. Now, this is a very mysterious case. This is very interesting. This is where there's some thought. It's not as if we're gonna figure out what happened, because remember, he told Isaiah that Hezekiah was on a trajectory towards death. And the best illustration I can give you is this. God takes a 747, a Boeing 747. He shoots a missile through the very heart of it, knocks off a wing. And the 747 begins to tumble in the sky. A prophet looks up and says, the jet is going to crash. Now, I don't think there would be anybody here that would disagree with the prophecy. Are you all with me here? Because we have set a trajectory, and the trajectory, yes, has been set already by the decree of Almighty God. He decreed that missile would fly through that 747 and knock that thing out of the sky. But, God made an exception. In the case of hezekiah's trajectory towards death and this is what makes it so amazing And he provides a sign at that time for a shift in the entire fabric of the world's metaphysics and all of the causality that is going to have to somehow be restructured. Because an event that God had set at one level of His decree was now being redirected in a different direction. And I would say again, this is all on the basis of an even more fundamental decree and purpose of Almighty God, including directing the prayer of Hezekiah and God's response to that prayer. All of it again directed by the decree of God. But God had already set some things in motion by a decree. where this man had a disease that was unto death. And in order to shift the direction of what was going to happen, something supernatural had to happen. And it was figured, it was symbolized by God moving the globe or stopping the globe for a period of 10 degrees on the sundial. In other words, God had to move heaven and earth, literally, in order to give this man a 15 year lease on life. See, that's the thing, and hopefully there's some shivers going up and down your back. to know that God can reshift all of reality. Sort of like some of those science fiction movies that you watch from time to time, where somebody goes back in time, changes one little event, and then it dominoes into a lot of other changes, because all events are interconnected, as you know. So God had to move heaven and earth to change the direction he had already set. for the life and or for the death of this King Hezekiah. And this should be amazing for a number of reasons. Number one, God is totally sovereign. Man alive. Anybody who can stop that globe or move that globe back 10 degrees and say, let's do this one more time. Anybody who can say this 747 is in the sky, it's tumbling down, two wings knocked off, and it's gone 360 about 147 times, it's 20 feet from the ground now, and anybody who's gonna save that 747 at this point is gonna be an act of supernatural strength and power that has been hitherto unrecorded in the history of mankind, that's for sure. So that's the first reason. The first reason we should be amazed is that God sovereignly determines. He still sovereignly determines. And anybody who says, well yeah, God sovereignly determined that he would die, and I believe God sovereignly determined he would recover and live 15 more years, but I do not believe that God sovereignly determined the prayers of the man Hezekiah is foolish. God is sovereignly determined every event, including the prayers of this man. But there must be multiple layers going on in the purposes of God from what I can determine. And please understand that God is also emotionally impacted by the prayers of this man. He is persuaded. Yet at the same time, his purposes are not thwarted. So, see, here's the other aspect of this. Your prayers really matter, evidently. Evidently, whatever Hezekiah said was persuasive to God and changed the direction of where reality was headed according to God's initial decree. Again, I'm saying there's a fundamental, more fundamental decree that works, that is underneath everything that is running, but please understand that any theology that detracts from the sovereignty of God ought to be rejected by us, but just so much, just as much, any theology detracting from the power of prayer, and the idea that God can be emotionally impacted or that prayer can accomplish some incredibly powerful and amazing things ought to be rejected as well. So if in any way we detract the way that the Word is preached or the Word is understood by you, Somehow you walk out of here saying God is less sovereign, or my prayers are not going to be affected because God is a faceless fate, a computer program that's pre-programmed all of reality, and there is nothing that I can say or do that might have any kind of an impact upon God's emotional fiber. That, my friends, is not true. We don't get that out of Scripture. The end result of all this is, wow, I'm not going to be able to explain God to you this morning, and you should say, duh. You should say duh. Now, sadly, guys like John Locke did not say duh. And that's how rationalism destroyed the doctrine of the sovereignty of God and the doctrine of the Trinity over the last 250 years of American Armenian Christianity and the rest. It's very, very sad that somehow people could not deal with the incomprehensibility of God, so they had to explain Him. They had to explain Him before the sermon was over. I am perfectly comfortable not explaining Him to you. Is that okay? I'm gonna move on. Just gonna move on. Everybody ready? We're just gonna leave that behind, we're gonna say, that's pretty awesome, and then we're gonna move on. Okay? Alright, let's do it. Second thing we get from this passage is Hezekiah has a basic grasp of the gospel. And that's this little piece, it's kind of funny, it's almost like Isaiah found this little scrap of paper with like, you know, 16 verses on it, like this much, that Hezekiah had on his shelf, and he grabbed it and he said, ah, this looks pretty good, let's include this in the Holy Writ. It's just, it's interesting. It just, it shows up. This little tiny piece of Hezekiah's prayer to God shows up and we have effectively a psalm. It seems to me that Hezekiah must have been a psalm writer and it's possible. Some people think that some of the psalms were written by this man Hezekiah. And it's very possible, because we get something very poetic in here. We get a feel for Hezekiah in a very, very deep state of oppression. And he's coming face to face with the reality of his physical death. And it's just a very, very intense analysis of death. Most ungodly people refuse to even think about death. Occasionally you'll have a Dylan Thomas, an unsaved man, who will write, do not go softly into that dark night. Fight, fight against the dying of the light. So, you know, you have some who will say, it's coming. Good, you know, I'm glad there's a little fear of death or maybe a fear of God amongst some of these people, but Hezekiah could see that death was a very, very evil and undesirable thing, and he wrote extensively on that here. But I'm going to move down into the gospel piece of it, verses 17 through 20. Let's skip down to 17 through 20, because after saying, you know, this is a bitter experience, my age has departed, removed from me like a shepherd's tent, and it's like one of those El Cheapo tents you get from Walmart that lasts for like two, you know, that's it, you know, that's life. Life is an El Cheapo tent from Walmart. Walmart fall apart. That's what life is. I tell my wife, you know, you buy something at Walmart tomorrow, just schedule a trip tomorrow. We're gonna buy a new one tomorrow. Okay, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. If anybody's listening, works at Walmart, God bless you. All right. But he's saying life is very tenuous. There isn't very much here. And it goes just like that. And my soul is bitter, and for peace I had great bitterness. Then verse 17, he shifts and he says, thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption, for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. Isn't that amazing there in verse 17, everything shifts. I mean, it's just like darkness to light. Just boom. There's actually no transition whatsoever, no segue. You're supposed to segue in music and stuff. I don't know how you shift from this dark, dark thing to this bright thing. But the segue is just boom, boom, boom, from the darkness to the light. And Hezekiah really gives to us here a very simple gospel. And I love this. This is one of my favorite parts of the book of Isaiah. And I think you ought to look out for these little pieces of the gospel. I told you last week that there are short gospels. I didn't tell you. I told the Shepherd Center guys. Psalm 119 is an example of a Bible. There are certain Bibles in the Bible. Proverbs 30 is a Bible. It's a very, very short compendium of all sorts of aspects of truth all combined in one neat little package. So you have that in Psalm 119, it's kind of a little Bible. You have Proverbs 30, it's a little Bible. But here you get a tiny little gospel, all summarized, the very, very core issues of the gospel, a very, very simple gospel. And let me tell you this, what's shocking about this is there is no essential difference between the gospel found in the New Testament and the gospel found in the Old Testament. I just, man, well you want to boil it all down? You want to bring it right down to the very, very nub and the crisp of everything involved in the gospel? It's the very same thing. Jesus says in Luke chapter 23, I don't have it in front of me, Jesus says, I want you to go out there and preach, what? Repentance and remission. Repentance and remission. That is, your sins are forgiven, now get out there and love me and serve me and walk in my ways. And you just get these very, very simple summaries of the Gospels and you find the same thing in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, no real difference. Hezekiah believed in the forgiveness of sins. And it's so essential. That's so basic. I just finished reading a book. I'm wrapping up a book. On the North Korean Christians. Four generations of North Korean Christians that survived. From generation on to generation on to generation. It's an amazing story. They were beaten. They were imprisoned. Their Bibles were taken away. Their grandfather burned the last Bible 67 years ago, or however long it was. They had to. Otherwise, the gendarmes were burning everything down in the village anyway. There's never been, I think, any more of a hardcore persecution door-to-door. 1984-ish Orwellian persecution ever in the history of the world. I've read the Gulag Archipelago. I've read many other stories. Nothing as bad as North Korea. And the fact that the faith might survive over 65 years is like mind-blowing. These people had no Bibles. All they were left with, this one son who speaks of his father and his grandfather, he said, all I really had, especially in the prison camp when I was there for a year, were two things, the Ten Commandments and the forgiveness of sins. That's all He knew. He didn't have any Trinity. He didn't have any Book of Job, Book of Psalms, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He had nothing else. All He knew is that there is a God and He forgives sins. You need to pray to Him and keep the Ten Commandments. That's it. That was the essence of it. Now as time progressed, they remembered a few other things their grandfather taught them. But for these reasons, they would just breathe a little bit. Like one time, he was at work, and a friend at work said, I'm having trouble with my marriage, yours is very peaceful, what's going on? He said, God forgives sins, and you need to keep the 10 commandments. The next day, he was in prison. Very few, very few. would ever tell their children their faith because their children would turn them in. Very few would ever tell their spouses their faith. They would pray with their eyes open. They'd sit catatonic for 30 minutes. No one would know what they were doing. That's all they would do. They couldn't move their head. If they moved their head down a little bit, they would be arrested and thrown in prison for 10 years. They moved their chin down this much. The enemies were all around watching to see if the chins would go down a quarter inch. They couldn't let their chin go down a quarter inch, not a quarter inch. For 60 years, amazing story. of the faith that survived. By the way, just remember that the premier, the president, the first president, the man who waged the revolution in North Korea, had a grandfather who was a Presbyterian pastor, and all of his family were Christians. His father was a Presbyterian elder. And this man rebelled, became one of the most phenomenal apostates of the last 50 years, and created the most despicable place on planet Earth. The most despicable places on planet earth will be apostates that come out of Presbyterian churches. This is why Brother Mike Chappell's warning last week to the youth here in this congregation, critical, critical. Do not apostatize from faith. That was referred to in this book written by this This family is an amazing story. You need to pick up the book if you get a chance. But the point I want to make is that they had a very, very simple creed. They must live by the Ten Commandments, and they must know and believe that God forgives their sins. That's all they had were these two things. If you knew that God forgives your sins, and you're supposed to live each day by the Ten Commandments, you're way ahead of a lot of seminarians. who get all bound up in the separation of justification and sanctification, and then they have their stupid system of merit. You're way ahead of fundamentalists who go way beyond God's laws, way beyond the Ten Commandments. You're way ahead of the 100 million antinomian evangelicals in America who ignore God's laws. I mean, if you're just a humble little North Korean who's got it down, God forgives my sins, and I need to live by the Ten Commandments of God. That's all you have. You'll do fine. You'll do fine, just get the basics down. Now, as we grow, hopefully we'll add two or three more basics, but I think way, way, way too often, people get a lot of these minor issues, you know, all these theological complex structures and things, and it messes them up after a while if they don't have the basics down. Behold, for peace I had great bitterness, but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption, for thou hast cast all my soul's sins behind my back, or behind thy back, my mistake, behind thy back. What a beautiful, beautiful phraseology. It sounds a lot like Psalm 103, doesn't it? As far as the east is from the west, so God hath separated our sins from us. Okay, let's move on to the second point of the gospel. Hezekiah believed in shades of the resurrection. Now, this is about the most you're gonna get out of the Old Testament. We referred to Psalm 115 at the beginning. of this service, but it effectively was saying the same thing that Isaiah 38 verses 18 and 19 brings out here. For the grave cannot praise Thee, death cannot celebrate Thee. They that go down into the pit cannot hope for Thy truth. The living, the living, He shall praise Thee, as I do this day. The Father to the children shall make known thy truth. Back up to Psalm 115. Let's take a look at those words one more time because very important here. The dead praise not the Lord. Verse 17, neither any that go down into silence. But we will bless the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. Praise the Lord. That is one of the most encouraging two verses I can find in the psaltery. Why? Because he says, the dead will not praise thee. We will praise Thee, and we will do it from this time forth and forevermore." They didn't see that Jesus was risen from the dead. They weren't told that they would be risen from the dead, but they knew that if God created them for the purpose of glorifying Him, He would guarantee that there would be some way in which they would continue to praise God forever and ever. It's just, you've got to appreciate the little bits and pieces of faith. These people had far, far less than what we have. We have the promises of God from the New Testament. We have the example of Christ risen from the dead. We have the whole agenda of God laid out to us in black and white, as much clarity as God will ever, has ever provided His people. We have all of that. All they had was just a shred of what the basics of life was. And what they said is the basics of life are two things. Number one, we are here to praise God and to sing the Psalms. Singing is one reason we're here. Number one, singing, that's why we teach our children to sing. That's why we emphasize singing here way more than math and everything else. Singing, we are here to sing. more than to do math. I know that math builds empires. You cannot build an empire without it. But you can't build a kingdom of God without singing. Singing is important. It's the basics of life. Here is a man on his deathbed, and he says the reason I am going to live for the next 15 years, two reasons. Number one, it is to sing. It is to worship God. And number two, it is to teach my children God's Word as I sit in my house, as I walk by the way, as I rise up, as I lie down. The second reason is family worship. The second reason is to disciple our children in the Deuteronomy 6-7 pattern. Worship is a measure. Deuteronomy 6-7 is a measure. Church worship on a Sunday morning is a measure. It's why you're here. It's why you're created. If the priority of church worship on a Sunday or the teaching of our children the Word of God on a daily basis is minimized, deprioritized, such that entertainment or somehow ratcheting up our disposable income ratio, which is the highest it's ever been in the history of the world, but we need a little more disposable income, little more disposable income, little more disposable. I gotta work the 70 hours, the 80 hours, the 90 hours because this is why I'm here to get disposable income and somehow family worship and family discipleship is put on the back burner and it's deprioritized. Friends, we're losing it. We're losing the purpose for life on planet Earth. What is life all about? The father to the children shall make known by truth. That's why you're here, dads. There shouldn't be any confusion about this. You shouldn't have to go through any midlife crisis. You shouldn't have 50 years of age going, I can't figure out why I'm here. I just haven't made enough money. I don't have enough toys. I need to get a really sharp red sports car. Maybe that will help. I just, I can't figure out why I'm here. It's all explained here in the words of a man on his deathbed. You're here to sing songs and to teach your children about God. Can I make it any clearer? Can I, man? Can I make it any clearer to you? I was in the middle of preparing this sermon and walked upstairs and said, we forgot to do Bible time today. Everybody, come on! We gotta do some singing! I gotta teach the Word of God!" Emily was at the post office, so I had to wait 20 minutes. But, you know, again, I'm the teacher, I'm the pastor, and I forget why I'm here from time to time. I do. I'm paid to be good. The rest of you are good for nothing. But it's just all of us, I think, we just lose it. We just lose it, don't we? We forget the reason. Okay, we go hiking. We go swimming out in the reservoirs. We go to the pool. We do this, we do that. Why? Why? So that we can sing about water and trees and praise God for all of these things at the end of it. That's why we're doing all of this. The fundamental indication that you love your children has got to be that you want to see them part of the kingdom of God and that you want to save them from hell. I think that's even more basic than running out and saving them from getting run over by a semi-truck, don't you think? I mean, you know, I think every parent here would want to save his kids from a semi-truck, right? You saw your kid running out in front of a semi-truck, you'd run out and grab him, toss him out of the way. Well, don't you think that for the 18 years that they're in your home, it would be really a good thing to try to save them from hell? From going the way of everlasting torture and punishment, but also not being able to sing the praises of God forever, which is the fundamental purpose for your little two-year-old, your four-year-old, your eight-year-old. Salvation. Salvation comes through the teaching of the Word of God, through the daily teaching of the Word of God. The longer I live, the more I realize it's not a one-shot deal. As John Piper said a couple of years ago, it really helped me, he said, I don't think a sermon does that much good. He's right. I don't think one youth camp does all that much good. I don't think One emotional prayer with your kid at five years of age does that much good? I think 7,320 days of Bible time does a lot of good. That's what I think. That's what I've learned. That should be an encouragement to some of you because you're saying, well, boy, we have worked already 3,647 days and haven't really made the progress that we hoped we could have made. Good, you've got 3,472 to go. So stay with it. but you're supposed to hang around. Why are you here? Why does he get 15 more years? To teach his son the word of God. That's why you're here. To sing a few more songs. Okay. Let me draw in Psalm 78, five to 11 briefly. this does tie in, Psalm 78, five to 11, because this really ties in the whole nature of the kingdom of God and what it's about. Now, granted, the restoration and the worship of God there in Jerusalem was a good project. Hezekiah did some good things, but this element of teaching the word to your children. Remember, they went to Jerusalem three weeks out of the year. What did they do the other 49 weeks? 49 weeks, what did they do? Well, Deuteronomy 6-7 is a measure. It's a measure. That's why, you know, something of this family integrated issue is a measure. Something of it. I'm just not exactly sure what. We are being challenged right now at the presbytery. They're asking us this question. How important is family integrated? Well, according to Hezekiah, it's really important. It's like right up there in the top two things you do in life. According to Hezekiah, it's really important. Psalm 78 5 to 11 also brings it out. He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel which he commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children that the generation to come might know them even the children which should be born that they should rise and declare them to their children. that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments, and might not be as their fathers, a stubborn, rebellious generation, a generation that said not their heart or right, whose spirit was not steadfast with God, the children of Ephraim being armed and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle, they kept not the covenant of God, refused to walk in His law, and forget His works and His wonders that He had showed them. The typical process of failure in generational continuity, at least from the 1950s on through the 1990s, is this, the first generation doesn't integrate the word of God into their children's lives. And I think it's an integrated element. It's got to be integrated. It's got to be all the way through. It's got to be kind of the 724 integration idea. Not that we separate out family worship. It's not like we separate out Sunday from Monday through Saturday, and it's not as we separate out Monday morning at 7 a.m. family worship to the rest of the day when we're just going to live like the devil and do whatever the devil does. Okay? No, no. We integrate it as we walk by the way, as we rise up, as we lie down. Integration element, very, very important. When the first generation says, we're going to be dualists, We might separate Sunday from Monday to Saturday, but we certainly will separate our little devotional time in the morning from everything else throughout the day so that discipleship doesn't feel very integrated at all. The first generation doesn't integrate God's word into their children's lives, into their education, their entertainment, the dinner time around the table, et cetera, et cetera. So the children pretty much figure it out. The second generation realizes that religion is something that's external, doesn't work through the warp and the woof of their lives. So religion moves to the outside. It's gradually divorced from other parts of their lives, and sometimes divorced from their hearts, and sometimes they're saved, but Christian children peel God away from other parts of their lives, gradually accepting a foreign worldview, and the salt loses its savor, and so forth and so on. They have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof. This is the second generation. They have a form of it. All they have is the form. Their parents gave them the form. That's all their parents gave them. It was just a form. So there's no real heart left anymore. By the way, the quintessential proof that the faith is dying or dead is the resurrection of Christ is no longer in culturalized, no longer a reality to them. Church services move away from the first day of the week. The first day of the week is a major symbol, has been for 2,000 years. Huge, huge. Christians were like, first day of the week, Jesus has risen from the dead. Resurrection day. That was huge. It was like the big symbol, as symbolic as the wedding ring is on my finger. That's a huge symbol to all of you. All of you know I'm married. Huge. Well, whenever Christians woke up for 2,000 years, they woke up on a Sunday morning, they said, it's resurrection day, let's go worship Jesus. But the last 10 or 15 years, 20 years, 30 years, we're moving more towards cremation. We're moving more and more towards Saturday services, et cetera, et cetera. Why? Because the resurrection is not like enculturated in our bloodstream, running through it, affecting the way we dress, the way we celebrate days and years and all the rest. We've lost it. Much of this has been lost. Much of this has been lost in our culture. So the second generation, religion moves to the outside. They forget why they're doing certain things. As in, they begin to meet on Saturday. Because who cares? Because the resurrection is not like one of those top two things they believe in. Number two is resurrection. Number one is God exists, forgiveness of sins. Number two, resurrection. That's not right there. And they really, really, really believe it, and they exemplify it. The third generation wonders why they're doing all this meaningless ritual. They throw it off, and you get the 88% problem with the millennials. But the point is that they had two generations of apostasy before them. that manifests itself in the present day. Okay, so Hezekiah said, nah, not gonna work. It's really interesting, though, as we get into chapter 39, he didn't take his words very seriously, because he said one of the reasons to live is to pass on the vision of the kingdom of God to the next generation, to teach our children the word of God. He says, that's why I'm gonna live for the next 15 years. But as you read the next section, chapter 39, I'm not picking much of this up. I'm not getting a lot of this generational vision out of Hezekiah. He is cured. God cures him from this issue. And we have this little story of him bringing in these guys from Babylon to check out all that he's done. But now if you back up to Hezekiah, I'm sorry, 2 Chronicles 32. If anybody ever tells you to turn to Hezekiah, Just tell him, stop. Okay. There is no book of Hezekiah. But 2 Chronicles chapter 32, I want you to look at verses 24 to 29, because this is very important to understand chapter 39 of Isaiah. 2 Chronicles 32, 24 to 29. Here we go. In those days, Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And he prayed to the Lord, and He answered him and gave him a sign. But Hezekiah did not make return according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud. So that interprets what happened between 38 and 39. Y'all with me here? Really helps here to tie in 2 Chronicles 32. Hezekiah was healed. Hezekiah got 15 more years, but according to verse 25 of 2 Chronicles 32, Hezekiah did not make return according to the benefit done to him for his heart was proud. He didn't make return. Somehow, you know, God gave him the 15 years, he buried the talent. Didn't really do all that much with it, but he was proud. Therefore wrath came upon him in Judah and Jerusalem. But Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah." As I said, this man's a complex man. He's very complex. He's complex like the rest of us. We have good days, we have bad days. You know? And if Kevin Swanson gets really, really proud between 2013 and 2015, will that affect this church or will that affect some aspect of the Kingdom of God in the 21st century? Yeah, it will, it will. Now, Kevin may humble himself in the year 2019, and kind of get back on track, and wake up, come to his senses, repent of that, and kind of move along, and God may attend the blessing in his life as the years progress, but just kind of keep that in mind, that everybody's life is a journey. We have ups and we have downs, and we really need the mercy of God every day, every day, every day, every day. He's Achilles' heel, Hezekiah's Achilles heel was pride, was pride. Now, God had given him a lot of wealth. Wealth is not a bad thing. Wealth is not a bad thing. But his response to his wealth apparently was pride to the point where he made a really bad call. He invited the enemy in to check out everything he had. And it seems to me that people like to show off their wealth. They tend not to be inauspicious with their wealth. They just tend not to be. They make a little bit of money. They make their first $50,000. They're going to buy a really fancy sports car and everybody's going to go, ooh, ah. Somebody says you can tell who the junior engineer is. He drives the $50,000 sports car. You know who the CEO is. He's the guy with the beat-up old pickup truck parked right next to him. And that's the guy who's probably still on his game. But the guy who gets so rich that he finally breaks in and says, I'm going to start showing it off, that's the guy whose corporation is going to go down within about 7.3 years, at least according to my calculations. Okay. But he just wanted to say, hey, check this out, man. These are my accomplishments. I'm wealthier than you are, I'm more powerful than you are. I don't know what the message was, but that's typically what people, it makes them feel good. It makes them feel good. They may get a little bit of wealth going. They did all this stuff, and this poor schlock over here hardly did anything. And this guy over here, he's been kind of a slugger most of his life. Ah, let me bring these sluggards and slocks in and check out what I've done, you know? I've done a lot more than you have. I've got all these accomplishments and I've got all this wealth. I'm more powerful than you. It could be that was what motivated, I don't know. But as Calvin said, I don't have Calvin noted here, but he said, our days of prosperity are far more dangerous than our days of adversity. There's some depth there, that's worth thinking about. God puts you through adversity, you're sitting up and paying attention, you're learning some things. But you walk through days of prosperity, it seems like now you're on dangerous ground. All he's saying is dangerous, it's more dangerous in your days of prosperity versus your days of diversity. But here, friends, don't you ever forget, everything we are and everything we have been and everything we've become has come from God. God can get our attention better by adversity than by prosperity. Think about your own children for a second. Just think about your own children. Can you get the attention of your child, especially when it comes to some little character trait issue in their life, by spanking or by giving them 27 gifts on Christmas? It's so easy. to say to God, I made it. I don't need you, God, anymore. Thanks for the bucks. Now take off. I'll take it from here. A child does better with spankings than being spoiled with 10,000 toys. Why? Because children by nature don't love and honor their parents very much, and gratefulness is pretty fleeting amongst sinful people. I think that's it. I think that's it. Whatever the case, this was his Achilles heel, as we read in 2 Chronicles. Okay, secondly, second problem here at the end of his life. Now, again, 2 Chronicles clarifies that he repented and God continued to push off the Babylonian captivity. But the second problem he has, he trusted the antithesis. He trusted the antithesis. He was proud, but he trusted the antithesis. He didn't realize, you're still in battle, man. It ain't over yet. I realized 140,000 people died, and it was just a miracle from God, and you were sitting there cowering in your castle, and you couldn't do anything, what, 14 years ago, or 15 years ago, but it would be good if he had remembered that. It would be good if he remembered there are really, really powerful forces in this world, and okay, you overcame one of them, there's 10 more. And if another one comes, and you're doing this proud thing, I don't need you, God game, It's probably not gonna go very well for you. This is what he forgot. He forgot the power of the antithesis. The power game is always corrupting, as in men are always coveting power, men are always coming after you, they're envying riches, they're envying yourself, they're envying you for following the true and living God, and they will do whatever it takes to rip apart the people of God. The envy is this idea of somebody coming upon people who are righteous and people who are wealthy. People who are walking God's ways and people who have been blessed for it. Envy cannot stand either angle of that. They cannot stand the fact you have godly people who are living happy lives, prosperous lives. They don't like that. There are evil people out there that want to corrupt you, they want to destroy you. And Satan is right there at the top of the heap, planning our destruction all the time. For us, we will make no quarter for the antithesis. We must demand unconditional surrender from the outset for all of our enemies constantly, and we should make no quarter with them. So he trusted the antithesis. He was far too kind with them, far too kind to them. Okay, thirdly, he had a short-term vision. And this we read from the last few verses. It's kind of weird that he says, okay, God's gonna destroy me. God's gonna turn all my sons into eunuchs. Well, at least I get to live. Now, some commentators say he's responding to God in a good way. because he's looking at God's promise. He's saying, whatever God is saying, whatever God's doing, that's a good thing, and that's true. That's true, but I'm not sure he gets the lesson, and we need to draw a lesson out of this. Our major concern should not be to buy ourselves 15 years. It should be to see something more of the kingdom of God working its way out into our own lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren. Kingdom-minded men take an interest beyond our own lives. And it's very possible that he saw the captivity coming home. In fact, I think I read a short testimony to that extent. But kingdom-mighty men are taking an interest beyond their own lives. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure, Matthew 13. A treasure hid in the field, the which when a man hath found, he hides, and for joy thereof goes and sells all that he has and buys the field. We should be thinking of a church beyond our time, beyond our day. We should be willing to sacrifice of ourselves for a church that will exist later on, beyond our own lives, in the year 2020, 2040, 2060. And I'm trying to think of how we raise up the next generation of young men to be elders and pastors. I started that five or six years ago because I was thinking, we've got to get a church in the year 2040. We need to be focused on the future as well as the present at the same time. Imagine somebody taking the gospel to an island way out in the middle of nowhere. This happened, by the way, in the 1800s and the early 1900s. The gospel is taken to these islands, an island with 40,000 people. And they begin to preach the word of God. They begin to present Christ and His resurrection. These people get saved. And they begin to work a little bit in the institutions. And sure enough, they stop eating each other. And sure enough, they start doing civil governments, and they stop stealing each other's stuff. And God's Word is affecting their lives. You're discipling the nation, the small island nation of 40,000 people. But what would happen if you forgot to turn to all the men? all the fathers in those congregations, you forgot to turn to them and say, oh, by the way, there is Deuteronomy 6-7, there is Ephesians 6-4, there's the book of Proverbs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, all the way through 31, there's 1 Thessalonians 2-11, there's every single passage about what to do with kids. Some of you forgot all about that. You dragged a few Sunday schools out there. You said, oh, let's let Rousseau and the public schools from France take over the Japanese schools, and we'll let John Dewey affect our K-12 schools out in New Guinea, and we'll do all the public school thing over here. We won't let fathers get involved. We won't bother with Deuteronomy 6-7, Ephesians 6-4, Proverbs 1-11. We're busy teaching the gospel, the gospel, the gospel, the gospel. We're just ignoring these little aspects of generational continuity. What would happen after 40, 50 years? Exactly what we see are happening on the mission field today. I've been to many places on the mission field, Mexico, Japan, Canada, elsewhere, Korea, and you walk into a lot of these churches and you see lots and lots of gray hair, lots of gray hair, very little. of the next generation. In some cases, almost all of the next generation walking away. Okay, so after spending 27 million dollars getting the gospel into New Guinea, or spending 148 billion dollars of American monies getting the gospel into Japan, what happens after 75 years of boarding schools for the missionary kids? And 75 years ago, oh, we don't need to worry about fathers learning Ephesians 6-4 or Deuteronomy 6-7. What happens to these churches after 60 years? You have to go back, you have to spend $27 million and get the gospel back to the 60,000, 40,000, get them saved again. That's the kind of thing that has to happen. That's why the emphasis is important. The generational aspect to the kingdom of God is a major aspect. I believe it's a measure. I don't think you can just do geographical, shallow gospel, institutional, kind of sink into some aspects of institutions like the civil magistrate, but walk away from the generational component, the time component. I don't think you can eliminate the time component. I think God is committed to the time component of His kingdom, don't you? Don't you think He says, I want something to replicate here. I want to get something going to replicate from a generation to a generation to a generation. That's what I read from Malachi chapter 4. The hearts of the fathers turning to the sons and sons to the fathers in the New Testament era. Or God will smite the nation with a curse. Or God will smite a church with a curse. where fathers are aborting their sons, sons turn into homosexuals, sons euthanize their fathers, fathers leave 50% of their sons on their birthday to fend for themselves because they're not married to their mothers, fathers don't disciple their sons into life. You know, you add all this up over 30, 40 years or 50 years of a social system and you get D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R, you get C-U-R-S-E, you get a curse. You get a curse upon a nation, upon churches. No, God demands Righteous fruit. God demands godly seed. He demands it. He will have it. And I believe that God will have it. I do. I believe somewhere around the world, God will have it. I don't think Jesus is coming back where there will be no generational continuity. I don't believe that. I believe that the kingdom of God must include a generational continuity that is way outside of this 88% leaving the church or whatever the millennial generation is doing. Billy Sunday and Dwight L. Moody didn't have much to show in their generations. Billy Sunday's last grandson was dead in San Francisco, killed by his homosexual lover in the 1970s. If that doesn't synopsize what has happened in El Cheapo American evangelical Christianity, I don't know what else will. Now thankfully, I mean, we see other examples. Other examples in the present day. I mean, I just heard that somebody ran into Richard Wurmbrand's grandson. He didn't know anything about his grandfather's legacy. And he's going to, a church in central California right now, learning the gospel, from what I understand, the very first time. May that not happen with us? Let's do what Hezekiah said. Let's teach our sons the word of God as we sit in our house, as we walk by the way, as we rise up, as we lie down. I visited with my mother, aging grandmother, soon to be great-grandmother. I told my mother, you have to stay alive. You have to speak to your great-grandchildren because we have such a heritage here. You need to do the Psalm 78 thing with our children's children. Because here's one reason, there aren't a lot of godly heritage out there and our children marry into legacies that don't have as much generational continuity as we have in our family. And so all these aging grandmothers and great-grandmothers of the faith, talk to your children, your grandchildren. I told my mother, I don't care if you're just here in a rocking chair for the next 15 years, we'll bring everybody here to Grants Pass. We'll drag them all here, and so you can talk to them for an hour or two. We won't be in your house. We'll go rent some hotels down the road, but we're coming here, and we're going to just soak in the spiritual legacy that you have given to us. Our children, our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren will need this. The power of a godly legacy is incredible. Roughly, think about this, according to the second commandment, 250 times more powerful than ungodly legacies. Let's say you had a family with a godly legacy, goes back five generations, marrying into an ungodly legacy. And you're saying, well, the ungodly legacy outweigh, I mean, somebody who's a Christian, but came out of ungodly legacy. Will the ungodly legacy outweigh the godly? I don't think so. You've got a 250 times ratio, at least according to the second commandment, right? The ungodly legacy extends to the third and fourth, but the godly legacy will extend to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments, meaning that God has put a 250 time factor on the blessing of a godly legacy. Praise God, He's that good. So what we do now really does affect future generations. We need to maintain a very optimistic future perspective, an eternal perspective for the kingdom of God. Even if there's a short Babylonian captivity that's gonna happen, man, we gotta be planting seeds right now for what's gonna happen after the Babylonian captivity. I don't know what the future holds, but all I know is what we do right now will matter in generations from now. We will not always languish in our Babylonian captivities, we don't. Let's plant the seeds. Let's plant the seeds of good things that will bless many generations after us. Let's plant the gardens in the ashes of Western civilization as all these other things are corrupting around us. Let's just trust in God that He's going to raise up faithful generations. after us, and He will have a church that will be fruitful, very fruitful in the year 2040, year 2060. I believe it's going to happen. I truly believe it's going to happen. We see seeds of it right now. I think God is going to have a church in the year 2040, and it will be healthy. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for the testimony of Hezekiah, a man like us who struggle. We have ups and downs. We have times of pride, but we have times of repentance. Lord, I pray that in all of this we would have a long-term vision of your kingdom. That there is something very powerful that's happening right now that will extend your kingdom even more into future generations. Lord, you're not done with your church. You have done marvelous things in time past, and you have blessed generations of Christians, even in our era. something more than you did with David, with his own sons and grandsons. Father, the Spirit of God is alive. He has visited us. And there are gardens right now in the ashes of those who have planted bad seeds. Father, thank you. We bless you in Jesus' name. Amen. And everybody sit. Amen. You may be seated. And let's take some time out for the Lord's Table now, a time of communion with our Lord. If you are a member of a godly biblical church and you are accountable to that church, you're welcome to take communion with us. We have a little synopsis on how we practice the Lord's Table. in our bulletin. You might take a peek at that before you partake today. We offer grape juice and wine both. The juice is on the outside ring and the wine is towards the center, so just be aware of that. The institution was made with the fruit of the vine. There is some liberty as to what we use. Well, let me ask you this. Why should our faith be fuller and broader than Hezekiah's? I do think that we have more, and God has blessed us. God has blessed our families, sometimes with more of this generational continuity than he did with Hezekiah, whose son was Manasseh. Manasseh was a lost cause. I mean, at the very, very end of his life, he repented, but he was really the catalyst to the first major incursion into the land of Judah. But why should our faith fundamentally be deeper and fuller? Why should we? have greater faith, and I think the reason is obvious, the Spirit of God is with us, and Jesus Christ has come. Jesus is risen from the dead. We have a kingdom now, and Jesus Christ has come, and he has proven himself over thousands of years. How many times do I have to point out all the ways in which Jesus has changed lands and countries and peoples and cultures? I mean, you've heard that from your pastor for 12 years. You know, I've tried to say it's obvious. Open your eyes. The King is here. Jesus Christ has done some things in your own life, in my life, in many other people's lives over a long period of time. But more than that, we believe in the resurrection. We have the resurrection. Here's Martha talking to Jesus when Lazarus had died. And Martha said to Jesus, I know that Lazarus shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. And Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? And that's the question he's asking you right now. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. If you believe and live in Jesus, you will never die. Hezekiah knew that he had 15 years. He bought himself 15 years, as far as he knew. He couldn't see much beyond that, as far as we can tell. He couldn't see much beyond that. But we've been given an eternity of years. I mean, Isaiah turned to Hezekiah and said, you got 15 years, man. Hezekiah goes, whoopee! Jesus turns to you and says, you've got an eternity. What do you say? Whoopee sounds good. Praise God sounds good. Maybe a little louder. If this be the case, then there is nothing, I mean nothing, there is nothing we need to worry about. Nothing. We don't have to worry about dying the next time, or the next, or the next. We don't have to, there is nothing that can kill us. If this be the case, we can spend our lives focusing on singing the songs of our Redeemer. We can focus on teaching our children about Jesus. we can focus on living and believing in Jesus. And I want you to think about that as we take this, because I think the Lord's table is part of this. We all know about believing in Jesus, right? You've heard that many times. But here Jesus said, you've got to live in me. whoever lives and believes in me." It's interesting, he's, you know, I wouldn't even put it together that way. Grammatically, that sounds kind of odd. But he says, it doesn't matter. You're either going to believe and you're going to live in me. And the living in me involves this constant ever constant communion with Jesus, and that's what we do at the table. We come and we're in close communion with Jesus. And everything that you can think about concerning Christ as he has manifested himself in the word, especially in relation to his death and resurrection, that ought to be on your minds right now as you take the Lord's table. You think through, who is Jesus? Who is Jesus to me? What has he done in my life? You think through that, and maybe a prayer or two ought to be, ought to be prayed as well as you take this table. Let's now pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for the great communion that we have with our Lord Jesus Christ. We want to live in Him We know that we have to eat His bread, His flesh, and drink His blood if we are to be with Him. And this is a communion of His body and of His blood. We don't understand how this happens, and we're not going to make mistakes in terms of explaining it. But Father, one thing we do know is we need Jesus' blood and His body. We need to come into close communion with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Especially because it was His death that opened up those wounds. It was His death that precipitated the flow of that blood. And Father, we would be recipients of this this day that we might live, that we might live in Jesus. Oh God, we pray that this communion today would be refreshing, that we would know His love for us, and we would love Him in return. Right now, at this table, in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Thank you for listening to our messages from Reformation Church in Castle Rock, Colorado. Our church has been meeting in public school facilities for many years. Because of political pressures and shifting worldviews, it will be increasingly more difficult for us to continue renting public facilities. Hence, we are thankful that the Lord has provided us real estate for a building in Elizabeth, Colorado. We are now in the process of constructing our new building that may be used for regular worship, discipleship, shepherds conferences, and other ministry events. Presently, we have about 75% of funding necessary to complete the building. If you would like to contribute something to this project, we invite you to visit our website at ReformationChurch.com. That's ReformationChurch.com.