On the course of our pastor's messages and Hosea, he's introduced us to a very important, very critical spiritual concept. It's captured by one single Hebrew word. You'll find it in your Bible as you read your English translation as the word kindness, as the word mercy, sometimes the word loving kindness, even the term goodness or the word loyalty. But this word is just one word. It combines many of those ideas together and it looks something like this. In fact it does look like this not something like this. And as you look at that probably you're saying oh boy here we go. You know an egghead seminary professor he's got to throw a Hebrew word up on the screen right when we get started to confuse everybody. Nothing confusing about that. There are really three letters there. They don't even call them letters in Hebrew. They call them radicals. That's not because they're radically different than English, but because they're not normal letters, as you can see. We have the first letter, which would be represented by our word, our letter C-H. The second letter, the samech, is represented by our letter S. And the last, the Daleth, is represented by our letter D. And you see those little dots under there? Those are actually vowels. They're called vowel pointing, and they're both represented by our English letter E. And it's just pronounced or spelled in our language by the word Tesed. Now, this term, Though it often does appear in the Book of Hosea in fact six times and pastors faithfully been moving through Hosea with us. It is a big big idea. In fact it comes up two hundred and fifty five times in the Old Testament. So pastor in his mercy while he's on vacation has given me a bit of an assignment this morning to say the least. It's a big subject. So I started my journey through those 255 passages, looked at all of them, read them all, thought about them, took notes on them. And what I'm going to give you this morning is an attempt to bring those all into a single intense beam of light from the revelation of God. And I want this beam of light to be a tribute to the nature, the character of our great God and the Lord Jesus Christ for what He's done for us, as Megan so beautifully sang this morning, in His incredible mercy in shedding His blood so that there is no sin that we can do that is so great that our God cannot forgive it and will not forgive it. He is a wonderful, merciful, kind, loyal God. I've got a daughter that lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I want you to try to see or understand with me this idea a little bit from a human perspective. Stephanie has six children. Yes, we have six grandchildren. There are four more. There are 10 altogether, but her six are all eight years old and younger. You do the math on that a little bit and you know things are really exciting in their household. They're exciting in our household which comes to our house. I call it blessed chaos. What else can you describe it for that many little kids that age. But I watched Stephanie and my heart is really encouraged of course as a father. She loves her children. She teaches her children in their home. The ones that are of school age. She feeds them. She clothes them. She answers their questions. She meets their needs. You mothers know what I'm talking about. Many, many of you have done this and experienced this. You're constantly attending to the concerns of your children. And you love them more. But do your kids always appreciate what you do? No. Do your children always obey the commands that you give? No, they don't. Do they really have any idea the level of concern and compassion that's resident in your heart, moms, as in my daughter's heart toward her children? Do your children really understand, dads, the kind of compassion and concern and sacrifice to which you have gone and you will be willing to go? No. But regardless of that, You show them merciful, kind loyalty. A kind of loyal love, we could say. Our God is determined. He is determined, based on the great covenant that we enjoy as sons and daughters of God through Jesus Christ, to show to us His merciful, kind loyalty. His loyal love. that demonstrate it in every way imaginable to us, because we are His children. And unlike the human quality, which sometimes may be less or more in the hearts of men and women toward those that they're responsible for, our God's chesed Our God's merciful, kind, loyalty, His loyal love to us is described as abounding in Exodus 34, 6, where the Scriptures say, as the Lord spoke to Moses, The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness, there's our word, and in truth. His lovingkindness, His merciful, kind loyalty toward us is abounding. It is great. He entered a time when the children of Israel rebelled against God at Kadesh Barnea and would not go into the promised land after the spies had spied out the land. God was so initially filled with indignation because of their lack of faith and their lack of obedience, Moses interceded with the Heavenly Father in prayer and he said to him, the Lord is long suffering and of great mercy forgiving iniquity and transgression. And with that reminder that he was, as the Scriptures say here, of great mercy, our idea this morning that we're discussing, God relented and preserved the people and allowed Moses to continue to lead those people for 40 years in the wilderness because his loving kindness was great in addition to being abounding. If you've ever looked at Psalm 136 in your Bible, you've seen 26 verses where after every statement in every verse, There is the statement, His mercy endures forever. That's our idea. This wonderful, merciful, kind loyalty that God shows His people, as stated in that wonderful psalm, will give thanks unto the Lord for His good. His mercy endureth forever. Do you know the demonstrating This quality of merciful, kind loyalty is one of God's great goals and great actions in this world now toward us and toward all men, even the lost. It's a very interesting statement in Jeremiah 9, verse 23, where the Lord says through Jeremiah, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom or boast in his wisdom. Let not the rich man boast in his riches. Let not the mighty man boast in his might. But he that boasts, let him boast in this, that he knows and understands me, that I am the God that exercises justice, lovingkindness, and righteousness in the earth. Lovingkindness. That's our idea. And in these things I delight, saith the Lord. Our God especially is known by and characterized by this quality of merciful, kind loyalty. We could call it loyal love. And since this is true, I want you to be encouraged today. And I want you to become Someone who grasps the full benefit and value of this and even sees this transferred into your own life and your own thinking as a believing person. That you will become a merciful, kind, loyal person. Having loyal love toward those that are around you. I want us all this morning, by the grace of God, to be people who become Kasetian Christians. We should be Kasetian Christians. Resting in, trusting in, glorying in, and manifesting this great, merciful, kind loyalty as we are with people, communicating to people, living with people. Just how far Has or will God go with us in showing this merciful, kind loyalty? Well, all you have to do is think for just a few minutes about the thousand years of Israel's history. You've read your Old Testament, and you know from 1 Corinthians 10 that everything written in the Old Testament is written there for an example to us, to compel us to trust God and to rightly reverence or fear God. When Paul said all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable, he was referring also to the Old Testament Scriptures and the history of Israel. If it tells us anything, it tells us about God being one who is mercifully kind in His loyalty to His people. Over and over, what do we see happening with Israel? God blesses them. God favors them. I mean, He not only makes of Abraham a nation, That nation goes down into Egypt. What does God do? He delivers them out of bondage. He leads them through the wilderness and provides for them for 40 years. He leads them into the land and they conquer the nations and they have a land as a heritage and God favors them and blesses them. But what's the history? What's the story? The history or the story is one of turning from the Lord, being unfaithful, but then God sends them judges. He sends them those that will lead them, who turn them back to the Lord. Prophets to turn them back to the Lord. And God in His great, merciful, kind loyalty just won't let them go. Now, they've been dispersed for a season, certainly for many centuries from the land. But we know from Scripture that God will restore these people. God will still demonstrate His merciful, kind loyalty to these people. And you know, if we take that general picture of His loyalty and we bring that down just to a single individual, you don't have to think long about David as someone who knew the special favor and loving kindness of God. This wonderful, merciful, kind loyalty But what did David do? You read the history of David and there were egregious failures. There were tremendous sins. I mean, we're talking adultery. We're talking murder. We're talking very serious wandering from God. But God does what in His mercy? In His incredible, mercifully kind loyalty, He restores David and uses David. I want us to think together biblically for a few minutes about what we can ask of God based on this quality in His nature. What can we ask of Him? And I'd like you to turn with me to the center of your Bibles, to Psalm 119. Psalm 119. As I said, this word comes up, this idea comes up, this merciful, kind, loyalty of God that's to be manifested in our lives and we're to trust and have confidence in as believing people 255 times in the Old Testament. But there's an interesting and almost, in my view, beyond interesting cluster of appearances of this Word right in Psalm 119. And what's especially fascinating about this Psalm is that it provides for us specific direction about what we can and should ask of God based on the fact that He is, as He is described, a merciful, kind, loyal God who has loyal love to us and toward us. Therefore, what should we seek from the Lord? What should we ask from the Lord in order to be Chassidian Christians? People dependent and trusting in His merciful, loyal kindness toward us. Well, look with me in Psalm 119, this great psalm on the Word of God that presents so many perspectives about our relationship to Scripture, where specifically in these places I'm going to direct your attention, you will see the connection with the idea of God's merciful, kind loyalty over and over. So because God is as He is, we can call on Him, and we should call on Him, to deliver us. Deliver me, O Lord. Psalm 119, verse 41. I direct your attention to that verse. Look at it. Let your eyes settle on it for a moment. Let your mercies come also to me, O Lord. Your salvation according to Your Word. And that term, mercies, is our word. It is our idea that we're talking about this morning. Your salvation or your deliverance, your rescue, according to Your Word, Lord, may it come to me on the basis of Your mercies. Deliver me. Rescue me. God is ready and willing always. Men and women, we're in trouble for us to turn our hearts our souls to God to rely upon Him, to rescue us from our enemies. If you look at the very next verse in the psalm, you see that David is talking about those that were approaching him, his enemies. And he was looking for salvation, the term appears in our English Bibles. is the idea of rescue from those enemies. And over and over again in the Psalms as you read them, David is pleading oftentimes, isn't he, for rescue from his enemies. In prayers, he beseeches God for this. And on what basis? Because God is going to show merciful, kind loyalty to him. Hezekiah prayed this way when he prayed the Assyrians surrounding Jerusalem. And he's desperate. And he and Isaiah the prophet pray together. And God, in His wonderful, merciful, kind loyalty, delivers Jerusalem. And there are 185,000 Assyrian soldiers that are slain by an angel of the Lord. Deliverance and answer to prayer. What about Nehemiah as he's building the wall of Jerusalem in the Old Testament? The Bible says he sought the Lord. He prayed to the Lord because of the opposition of to buy and send ballot to build into the wall. And he built that wall. They completed that wall within a very short period of time. You say, well, we're to love our enemies as Christians, right, Steve? Yes, we are. But that doesn't mean those enemies don't exist and we don't need deliverance. It may be for you a neighbor who just is contentious and you're incapable of getting along with her, a co-worker, or tragically even a family member. And you need rescue from God. God is not inattentive to those concerns. But think with me biblically now. What else do we need rescue from? And on the basis of God's love and kindness, what else can we seek rescue from? Well, certainly from sin. The Lord Jesus gave us the pattern prayer in Matthew 6, verse 13. Deliver us from evil, O Lord. the slavery of habituations and addictions, whether it's alcohol or it's drugs or it's pornography or it's gambling or it's some other kind of obsessive behavior to which we've submitted ourselves and become enslaved. Our God has and will, in His merciful, kind loyalty, deliver us from the bondage of sin. And our God also is One who will deliver us in difficult circumstances by grace and in His time. I'm often reminded of the statement of Paul in my own thoughts in 2 Corinthians 12, 9 where he pleaded three times for deliverance from a physical illness and problem. A thorn in the flesh. And the Lord Jesus responded to him and said, My grace is sufficient for thee. By His grace and in time, our God will show merciful, kind, loyalty to us and deliver us in and from our difficult circumstances. I preached one time in a community near Richmond, Virginia, with a fellow that graduated from our seminary. And I was there for a week. He said, Dr. Hankins, I want to go out and visit a man who I know doesn't know Christ and I want you to come with me. I said, of course, let's do that. We drove out into the countryside, pulled into a long winding gravel driveway that went up to an old farmhouse and there was just a screen door. It was in the warm time of the year and he rapped on the door a few times and then just opened the door and went on in. I was a little surprised. He said, don't worry, this is normal out in this part of the country. And he said he's in the back of the house and he won't hear us. He's sitting in a room. He's on an oxygen machine. And we'll miss our opportunity to talk to him if we don't go on in. And so we did. And he knocked on that back room door and he called out in a raspy voice and invited us in and was very gracious. So we talked to him about Christ. Tried to help him understand that without Christ and Christ alone, though he was talking about his baptism and works that he'd done, that if he didn't place faith in Christ alone, he could not be delivered from his sin. And we used that oxygen tank that he was on as an example. Without that oxygen tank, you know, things wouldn't last very long, would they? And he chuckled a little bit. He said, oh no, of course they wouldn't. And suddenly, by the Spirit of God's work, a light came on. with Charles. This is a man that is in his late 60s, and he turned to Christ. He trusted Christ, called on the Lord to be saved. But the back story of that incident is that for an entire lifetime, his wife, a faithful, godly Christian woman, had lived with him as a chain-smoking alcoholic. He had emphysema, therefore, on the oxygen machine. She had managed to send several of her children to Bob Jones University. And she had prayed for her husband all of their married life. Two years later, I got a note that Charles died and went to be in the presence of the Lord. But you see, God in His loyalty and His faithfulness heard the cries of that wife and was loyal and faithful even to Charles, wasn't He? After all of those years of Charles hearing the Gospel and seeing the example of his wife, that God did not give up on that man. God did not let that man go in spite of all of his failures and all of his sins. God delivered him. God certainly Delivered his wife and giving her at least in the closing years of his life a Christian husband Who as I understand it from that pastor grew in the Lord? tremendously over the last couple years of his life God delivers in difficult circumstances By his great power based on his wonderful Merciful kind loyalty to us Once in the home of a woman where I was having a Bible conference in Charlotte North Carolina. She fixed a beautiful meal for the pastor and another few people in the church and I was there and there at the table was her 19 year old son and her 19 year old son had had brain damage as a very young baby. It had rendered him completely incapable of any kind of communication of feeding himself caring for himself. his entire life. She had devoted her entire life to the care and to the nurture of this boy who now the state of North Carolina had built a home not far from where they lived for young men just like him in that condition. And there was now an opportunity for him to be in residence there close to home able to come home to visit. they be able to go visit, and she to be able to have someone help her bear the burden. Do you know what this woman said to me when I expressed to her how unusual it was that right near their home a place like this was being built for young men just like their son? She said, the most difficult thing for me, with tears not only in her eyes but coming down her cheeks, the most difficult thing for me is to give Him up. And I thought, you know, God delivered this woman long before that home was ever built. He poured out grace upon her on the basis of His wonderful, merciful kindness and loyalty. And she was able not only to have a son, but to love her son and care for her son with great sacrifice over many, many years. I want you to see something else that we can ask of God because of His merciful, kind loyalty to us. We can ask Him, according to Psalm 119, verse 64, to teach us. The Word of God says, The earth, O Lord, is full of Your mercy. Teach me Your statutes. Our idea is the word mercy here. It's this concept we're talking about. And what does the psalmist say? The earth is full of this. Lord, I see at every turn the wonderful, merciful, kind loyalty You show to people. And You are demonstrating right and left. Now, Lord, please, demonstrate it to me. Teach me Your statutes. You know, there's little wonder that the psalmist cried out this way. He said in Psalm 119, verse 97, I have seen the end of all perfection, but Thy commandments are exceedingly broad. Yes, they are, aren't they? The Bible is an incredible, vast compilation of information, of ideas. We all face, don't we, the challenge of the scope and the size of the scriptures, 40 authors, 66 books written over a period of 1400 years. But in the face of that challenge in dealing with such an incredibly massive amount of information from God, what can we do based on God's loving kindness toward us? We can cry out to him by his spirit to teach us. Even though we face the challenge further of the complexity and detail of the Bible, we are given an opportunity in that to show our great devotion to God. As 2nd Timothy 2.15 says, we are to study to show ourselves approved unto God, workmen that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. You know that idea is that God expects us to work hard to actually go through the difficult parts of Scripture and to smooth the way for our own understanding? God will help us do that. And He will approve of us as a result. We face the challenge, don't we, of a lack of education and sometimes familiarity with the Bible. You know, this may sound like a strange thing to say, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if I'm speaking in the hearing of many people this morning who find the Bible discouraging. And this is the point I'm trying to make. It's discouraging because it is so massive. It is so complex. It is so detailed. You lack training, perhaps, and familiarity with the contents of Scripture. And it's just a daunting task to even think about really getting your mind and your arms wrapped around the Word of God. Listen, God and His loyalty to you and His merciful kindness will help you will teach you. I remember showing up at Bob Jones shortly after Noah's flood and being responsible to take a Bible placement test. That's what they did back in the day to figure out if you knew the Bible and then you'd be placed in a certain class as a result of the Bible placement test you take. And you know, I was all excited about that. I was a ministry major there as a freshman, 18 years old. I was all of one year old in the Lord. I'd read the New Testament through one time. Couldn't remember any of it to speak of. And I took the Bible placement test and I went to the post office to get the results from the Bible placement test and opened the door and pulled out the slip. received my first serious lesson in humility and walking with God. I was certifiably a Bible dummy. I had to go into the Bible dummy class for people who didn't know anything about the New Testament. Deeply humiliated, I went to the class. You know, I had a similar experience a year or two later with the first time I took a course called Bible Doctrines, Systematic Theology. I mean, it was a pretty thin book as books go. It was supposed to be a simple text on Bible doctrines for undergraduate students at Bob Jones. And I remember reading those short little assignments. I mean, you know, just a few pages. And I remember how dense that seemed to me and how difficult and how Man, I don't know how I ever remember this stuff, and I'm crying out to God. Please, Lord, give me wisdom. Help me in your mercy. Help me. I'm supposed to preach this book. I'm supposed to serve you. I'm supposed to help people. And I'm an idiot. Now, folks, I'm telling you the truth. I was in a bit of a crisis. God is faithful. And a thousand times I've found myself in that position. Lord, I don't know. I don't have an answer for this person. I don't have an answer for this problem. I don't know what to say in this situation. God, teach me. God is faithful, men and women. God will teach you. No matter how little you think you know or understand or how unfamiliar you may be with the Bible, listen, God, the Holy Spirit in your heart and your life can change you and help you and cause you to absorb the revelation of God and understand it and apply it to your life and to your experience. You should be. a Chesedian Christian. God will deliver you. God will teach you. Trust in His wonderful, merciful, kind loyalty. Because He will also comfort you. Look at verse 76. Let, I pray, your merciful kindness... There's our idea. ...be for my comfort, according to your word to your servant, God is ready and willing to meet you as the God of loving kindness when your heart, your life is filled with sorrow. That's what this is teaching us on the basis of His loving kindness, not on the basis of what you deserve. Would you pause for a moment and think this about this with me? Do you find yourself sometimes as a Christian because of your sin, your failures, your struggles to say, you know, really, God is not responsible to deliver me. God has no responsibility to teach me. I mean, I wouldn't blame God if he basically just let me alone. I'm such a fool. I have done this same thing over and over again. I've I've failed to read the scriptures this week. I'm not praying like I'm supposed to be praying. And you're you feel God is every reason to leave you alone. Now crisis or trouble happens in your life and you're struggling with this profound loss through death or injury. How do you recover from the tragic death of an infant child? How do you recover as a Christian from a life altering accident? I heard Tom Craig mention this morning his assistant pastor is Bobby McCoy as a ministerial student at Bob Jones. He was in a terrible head-on accident in front of the campus with a drunk driver. This is young man committed to the ministry and has spent his entire adult life as a quadriplegic in a wheelchair. He's an assistant pastor. What happened? How in the world Does Bobby do what he does? How does he rise to the demands placed on him and minister to other people? It's because he's come to understand how to come to God who is loyal and faithful and get comfort. You say you mean he's learned a series of verses. You mean some really wise counselor has laid it all out for him so he'll understand how to be happy even though he can't even get himself up out of a wheelchair? No, that's not what I'm saying. At all. What I'm saying is that there's a God in heaven who is so merciful, kind, and loyal that somehow by His Spirit, He so works through His Word in the hearts of His people when faced with incredible difficulty and loss that they can be comforted in their grief, in their difficulty, when their expectations are devastated, when what they had hoped would happen and be doesn't happen. And it isn't. I mean, ask John about it. Does this work? Many of you know John. I'm talking about John Vaughn. I'm talking about a modern-day Job. Terrible fire starting out in ministry. His wife and daughter are horribly burned. Eventually, after countless surgeries and operations, of course, Brenda now is with the Lord. He lost his son prematurely in a pedestrian automobile accident. John just keeps going on. How? He knows the God who is mercifully kind and loyal. who pours out comfort through the revelation of God. And what else can we ask of this God because of His nature and His character? We can just ask Him to deal with us. I like this general statement that the psalmist gives in 124 of 119. Deal with your servant according to your mercy and teach me your statutes. According to your loving-kindness, Lord. Not according to me. Not according to my nature, my character. Please, Lord. Not according to my obedience. Please, God. Not according to my progress. No. According to your loving-kindness. Deal with me. Deal with me and my personal concerns and needs. I am your servant, Lord. He states. So now, Lord, please teach me how. And it's more than just to understand the meaning of the statutes. Teach me how to live according to your statutes, to apply your statutes for life transformation. And isn't that really what it is about men and women that we behold us in a glass, the glory of the Lord, and we are transformed into the same image from glory to glory. by the Spirit of the Lord. As we take the revelation of God and we call out to God, deal with me. We're all very different, aren't we, from each other? Different dispositions, backgrounds, weaknesses, failures. We all have a private interior life, don't we? I know some of you as acquaintances. It's a big church. I know others of you as friends. We're closer. I know still others of you in a very close way. And then, of course, there's my wife and my family. I know them and they know me at a different level than everybody else knows me. And then I know me. There's that level. That's a scary level. And God knows me. And He knows me even beyond what I know. Thank God. Thank God that He will deal with me according to His lovingkindness. And not according to what He knows. Because that's the kind of God we have. A God who shows merciful, kind, loyalty to us. And then Psalm 119 verse 149. You'll notice the psalmist says, Hear my voice according to your lovingkindness, O Lord. Revive me according to your justice. Now he says, hear me. This is about prayer, isn't it? This is about having that intimate communion with God. And whether or not that's going to be effective and whether or not that's going to be real and dynamic is dependent upon not who I am, but upon who God is and upon this great quality of loving kindness that He will show. And as we assess our prayer life experience, we often find ourselves saying to ourselves that we have the what to pray struggle and the how to pray struggle When to pray struggle. But the greatest struggle is the struggle that says, why would God even listen to me? Why would God even pay attention to me? And the answer is right here. Because of His loving kindness. Because of Christ and what we have in Him as our Lord and our Savior. God will help us with our prayers, our communion with Him. I hope that is a comfort to you. I hope that's a great encouragement to you. Almost every Christian I meet and every Christian I talk to, and even when I hear pastors and teachers talk about prayer, they are bemoaning the paucity, the pathetic nature of their prayer life and their communion with God. They don't like the amount of time they spend. They don't like the extent to which they pray. They just think their prayer life is really, in their own judgment, a shambles. God and His loving kindness can and will transform that for you. He can make that different. So those times of intimate communion with God are what they ought to be. He will hear you on the basis of His lovingkindness. And He will assist you on the basis of His lovingkindness as you cry out to Him to be a man or woman of communion with God in a way, at a level you have never known or experienced before as a Christian man or a Christian woman. This lovingkindness of God in this regard is intended to be an enticement to you, an invitation to you to be more intent and more serious about praying. Because God on the basis of His lovingkindness will transform You're praying and he'll do something else as this passage we just read alludes to at the at the latter part of the passage. Notice verse 159 and Psalm 119. Consider how I love your precepts. Revive me, O Lord, according to your loving kindness. Listen, God is ready and willing when you're sensing deadness in yourself. to bring you to life, increasing your interest in things of God to replace your disinterest or dullness. He will bring you to life to grant you courage as a Christian person instead of fearfulness. He will bring you to life, revive you, and give you clarity instead of confused priorities. He'll bring you to life. He'll revive you and give you peace instead of frustration and anxiety. He'll bring you to life. and grant you faith when you're losing confidence. He'll bring you to life and give you hope instead of despair. And I've left this to the last because it's a verse that has our idea in it that I skipped intentionally in verse 88 of Psalm 119. Verse 88, Revive me according to Your lovingkindness, so that I may keep the testimony of Your mouth. He will bring you to life and cause you to have a heart of submission to His commands so that you will obey instead of rebel. Thank God. Praise His name. That He is a God of this nature and character. That out of the abundance of His merciful, kind loyalty to us, His loyal love. He will do all these things for us. But what He intends for us now is that we be like Him in showing this merciful, kind loyalty to others. Do you know that the Lord Jesus quoted Hosea 6.6 twice about this idea? He quoted it once in Matthew 9.13 about lost people and our relationship to them. He quoted Hosea 6.6 about this idea in Matthew 12 verse 7 about a relationship to save people whose behavior we may not understand or fully appreciate. And in both cases, the Lord Jesus said to those in his hearing at that time, I want you to understand, for I desire mercy, not sacrifice. In the knowledge of God, more than burnt offerings. I want you to be like me in this toward people. I want you to be mercifully kind and loyal. Have this living kindness. Extend yourself. No matter the offenses. No matter the failures. Reach out to people who need me and my truth and my gospel. It's interesting that the prophet Micah 6-8 said, Thou dost know, man, what doth the Lord require of thee. He stated, But to do justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. To love mercy. Our idea. We're told in Ephesians 5.1 to be imitators of God. And so we as believing people should be Cadescian Christians. Father, I pray that you would take these truths, ideas, and confirm them to our hearts. Encourage us with thy revelation. This morning, I pray that that would especially be convicting and working in the hearts of Thy people even now this morning. And there may be those this morning who would find some comfort, some encouragement in being able to say to you in prayer and by raising their hand, just that simple, overt act, that they're calling out to you on the basis of your love and kindness for what they need. And they're calling out to you to become Caddesian Christians. People whose lives are characterized by this as they deal with other people. Lord, help us as we're before You quietly for a few moments and speak to the hearts of Thy people. Now, Father, we commit ourselves to Thee and we ask Thy special blessing and favor and strengthening as we conclude our service this morning. In Jesus' name, Amen.