Let me pray for us. Lord, thank you so much for the gift of your word. Thank you so much for the gift of your people. Thank you for the gift of your son Jesus. Thank you for uniting us to him. Thank you for uniting us to you in faith. Thank you for your righteousness. I do ask that you would fill us now with your Holy Spirit. Help us to see clearly. Help us to be filled with a heart that desires to praise you. Help us to be conformed more and more into the image of your son Jesus. As we hear Psalm 9 this morning, we ask this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Our sermon text this morning comes from the book of Psalms, Psalm 9. I invite you all to turn there with me, Psalm 9. I'll open by reading the Psalm. Psalm 9. To the choir master, according to Mut Laban, Psalm of David. I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart. I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in you. I will sing praise to your name, O Most High. When my enemies turn back, they stumble and perish before your presence. For you have maintained my just cause. You have sat on the throne giving righteous judgment. You have rebuked the nations. You have made the wicked perish. You have blotted out their name forever and ever. The enemy came to an end in everlasting ruins. Their cities you rooted out. The very memory of them has perished. But the Lord sits in throne forever. He has established his throne for justice. And he judges the world with righteousness. He judges the peoples with uprightness. The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. And those who know your name put their trust in you. For you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you. Sing praises to the Lord who sits enthroned in Zion. Tell among the people his deeds. For he who avenges blood is mindful of them. He does not forget the cry of the afflicted. Be gracious to me, O Lord. See my affliction from those who hate me. O you who lift me up from the gates of death. so that I may recount all your praises, so that in the gates of the daughter of Zion I may rejoice in your salvation. The nations have sunk in the pit that they have made, in the net that they have hid. Their own foot has been caught. The Lord has made himself known. He has executed judgment. The wicked are snared in the work of their own hands. Higgins, Selah. The wicked shall return to Sheol, all the nations that forget God. But the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever. Arise, O Lord, let not men prevail. Let the nations be judged before you. Put them in fear, O Lord. Let the nations know that they are but men. Selah. This morning we are starting a two-psalm mini-series. This morning we're preaching Psalm 9 and next week we'll be preaching Psalm 10. I've titled these sermons, Praising with the Psalms and Praying with the Psalms. And if those two things don't sound that different, it's because they're not, right? Praying and praising usually go together, and they usually go together in the Psalms. They're definitely not mutually exclusive. And we easily could have switched the titles, and they probably still would have worked. As the Psalm 9 and Psalm 10 do go together, and so do prayer and praise. However, this morning we'll have more of an accent on the praise aspect, and then next week more an aspect of the praise. So do please return, because in a very real sense, you've only gotten half the story with this morning's sermon in Psalm 9, which If I'm sure most of us are familiar, the Psalms are songs, right? And Psalm 9 is a song of praise. David wrote this to praise God. And I think that word praise is something that we all kind of instinctively, we understand what praise is. I don't think it's one of those Christian words that has kind of lost its meaning through repetition. I think it's enough of a common word that we all have a sense of what it means to praise, even if we couldn't necessarily word it. But just in case, verses 1 and 2 gives us a number of synonyms. I will give thanks to the Lord. I will recount all your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exalt in you. I will sing praise. When we praise we express approval, respect, admiration, gratitude. What do we praise? We praise things we like. We praise Food. I can think of plenty of times I got together with people in this church and we praised food. We praised movies that we like, or books, people, friends. Sometimes we praise things that we don't like, but we know deserve it, right? We recognize objectively, I don't personally like this, but I understand it deserves praise. You might look at a house and say, wow, the architecture, that's really well done. It's genius. I mean, everything about this is nice. I personally don't like it. I wouldn't live there. But you still recognize that deserves praise. Psalm 9, David chooses to praise God. And our praise of God ought to flow both from affection and from God's deserving, right? God deserves our praise whether we feel like it or not. We ought to feel like it. We ought to feel like God deserves our praise. That's one of the reasons why David wrote this psalm and why the Holy Spirit inspired this psalm. We are given Psalm 9 to help us understand praise and to help us feel rightly, to help us want to praise, to want to give God glory. You see, in Psalm 9, there's many things we could praise about God. An infinite number of things, actually, that we could praise about God. But in Psalm 9, David specifically chooses to focus on God's righteousness, right? What David is praising in Psalm 9 is God's justice, the fact that God sits on the throne and that He judges the earth rightly. He always does what is right. He always does what is just. It's the substance of what David has to celebrate about God. However, I have a problem with this psalm. When I was first reading this psalm and getting ready to preach, I had a very peculiar feeling. This problem arises in me. Now, the problem I have with this psalm is kind of like the problem I'd have with a semi-truck going 80 miles an hour on the highway if I just stepped in front of it. The problem's not with the truck. The truck's working great. The problem's with me and where I happen to be. You see, I suspect that whether or not you sense this problem or felt this problem in the reading of the psalm has very much to do with what kind of day you're having or what kind of week or month or maybe year. I know that some of us came here this morning and we were thankful for the week that we had. We were ready to praise God. Thank you God. And I know that some of us probably, if not this Sunday, certainly other Sundays, came to church not saying thank you God, but why? Why this week? Why did this happen to me? Why is this going on? What do you do when you don't feel like what David is saying is true? God is righteous, he always does what is just. What do you do when you come to church and you had to bury someone that you don't think you should have had to bury, but evil, greedy people walk around, still breathing? What do you do when you leave the doctor's office with a cancer diagnosis, not looking good, and you know that there are drug dealers and murderers with a clean bill of health, sitting in relative ease? Well, I think we'll find this morning that Psalm 9 is actually still for you. David's not being insensitive. He's not being like Job's miserable comforter. Psalm 9 is an example of prosperity theology. David's not saying, hey, things are going great for me because I'm great. I think we'll see as we dive into this that Psalm 9 is for all of us, especially if we don't feel like it in the moment. So the rest of the sermon, this is what we're going to do. Two parts, two parts to the sermon. We're going to dive into Psalm 9. I want us to feel the movement of this song that David has written. I want to point out some of the details. I want us to see what he's doing. See the hints of why David is writing, why David is choosing to pray specifically God's righteousness in Psalm 9. And then, in the second half of the sermon, I want to actually do some praising according to Psalm 9. So we'll look at Psalm 9, and then we'll praise in accordance with Psalm 9. So I want you to open up your Bibles. I want your eyes on the page. I want you to be able to see what David is doing. As I said before, we're given these kind of synonyms for praise because in verses 1 and 2, what David is doing is he is kind of giving his marching orders for the rest of the psalm. He is summarizing what he's going to do. I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart. I will recount all your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in you. I will sing praise to your name, O Most High. This is the summary of what we're about to read in Psalm 9. This is how you are to understand everything that follows in Psalm 9. Psalm 9 is giving thanks to the Lord. It's recounting his wonderful deeds. This is a little mini application for us about praise, but if there's one thing that sometimes Christians can fall into an unhealthy habit, it's kind of thinking that saying the word praise is the same as praising. But it's not, right? Just saying, I praise you, God, is not quite praise yet. Some of our songs and even some of our liturgy sometimes make this mistake. If I said, I praise this painting, you would go, yes, continue. Because that sounds weird to you, right? You are waiting for the praise. The praise is going to follow. Saying, I praise the Lord, can be part of your praise. But if that's all we're saying, then our praise is anemic. We need to actually saturate ourselves with the truth of who God is. We need to be able to repeat these things. Rather than just saying, I praise you God, you're good, you're great. These are true. But let's back that up. Let's actually have content to our faith. David gives us content to his praise. He has something to say about God. Verses 3 to 10 is kind of the summary of David's praise, the summary of what he's choosing to say about God, choosing to celebrate about God, choosing to thank God for. He says in verses 3 and 4, When my enemies turn back, they stumble and perish before your presence. For you have maintained my just cause. You have sat on the throne giving righteous judgment. The first thing David has to say is, my enemies, my enemies were defeated, God. You defeated my enemies. You didn't let them overcome me. You didn't let their evil plans come to fruition. It didn't work out for them. You stopped them. You were able to do it. You sat on your throne. When David cites his throne, he's talking about God's power, God's ability to do this. He's the king. He has the authority and the power to do this, and he did it. He stopped them. He goes on in 5 and 6, you have rebuked the nations. You have made the wicked perish, right? This is not just an issue of a personal vendetta for David. You helped me defeat my professional enemies. No, these people David is talking about, they're wicked. They're evil. God didn't let them succeed. They're the nations, the outsiders, the ones who have rejected the one true God, who have rejected his rule and his law. And God rebukes them. He destroys them. You have blotted out their name forever and ever. The enemy came to an end in everlasting ruins. Their cities you rooted out. The very memory of them has perished. The wicked are forgotten because of you, God. They're forgotten. They become nothing. Verses 7 and 8, but the Lord sits in throne forever. He has established his throne for justice. He judges the world with righteousness. Not just Israel. He judges the world. He judges everyone with righteousness. All peoples are under the jurisdiction of the one true Creator God. It doesn't matter when your non-believing friends say, OK, well, Christianity, that's fine for you. I'm going to keep living my life. That doesn't put them outside the rule and jurisdiction of God. God judges all people. No one escapes. And he always judges rightly. He judges with righteousness. He judges the peoples with uprightness. Doesn't play favorites. Takes no bribes. There's no laziness in God. He's always going to do what is right. And he has jurisdiction over all people everywhere. We see in verse 9 that this means that the Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. Those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you. The Lord takes care of his people. He takes care of the oppressed. Those who seek him, those who know his name, to know his name means to have experienced his character, to have had a glimpse of who he is, his power, his goodness. You have experienced that and you come to know that that is worthy of your trust. God is worthy of your trust. Those who know His name, they seek Him. They want His justice. They're waiting for it. And those people who are waiting eagerly for the justice of God, He does not abandon. He does not forsake them. He is a stronghold. He takes care of them. He protects them. And so David celebrates these things in 3 to 10. He recognizes God has the power and the authority to judge. And he judges rightly. He takes care of his people because he judges rightly, because he does not let the wicked go. He does not let the wicked go so much so that when God is done with them, they are utterly and totally forgotten. And so David turns out to the audience and he says, Verses 11 and 12, the rest of you sing praises to the Lord who sits enthroned in Zion. Tell among the people his deeds. Tell others. Say it. For he who avenges blood is mindful of them. He does not forget the cry of the afflicted. God does not forget the cry of the afflicted. But then you listen to that and you hear that and maybe your first thought is, but I'm afflicted. I'm afflicted. That's why verses 13 and 14 are arguably the key to understanding this entire psalm. Verses 13 and 14 are the key to the entire psalm. You have to understand the psalms are their lyric poems. They are songs. They don't have the same organization as a narrative where you're telling a story or even like one of Paul's letters where he's making an argument and he's going logical point by point. Oftentimes the Psalms feel disconnected to us. They have their own internal logic, but it's just different than what you get in a letter or a narrative. Sometimes what you have in the Psalms linking parts together is something as simple as a single word or thought, an association that triggers something else and triggers the transition, much like in a conversation. You'll be talking about one subject and something you says, someone will respond to it. It's not exactly what you're talking about and the conversation moves on. You get these kind of abrupt transitions in the Psalms. And here we see What causes our transition is the word afflicted, right? That's the link between verses 12 and verses 13. David has been praising God. Praising God. Telling all the wonderful things that God has done. He turns out to the audience and he says, the rest of you join me in praising God. And then all of a sudden he shifts to asking God for something. And that shift is just that word afflicted. He does not forget the cry of the afflicted. And then in verse 13, be gracious to me, O Lord, see my affliction. You see, verse 12 and 11, if David was reciting this, is where his lips would start to quiver. As he gets to the end of his praise, as he invites everyone else to join him in praising, he who avenges blood is mindful of them. He does not forget the cry of the afflicted. Verse 12 is the quiver, and then verse 13 is where David loses it. And he interrupts his flow of thought, and he just turns to the Lord in prayer. Be gracious to me, O Lord. See my affliction from those who hate me. O you who lift me up from the gates of death, do this so that I may recount all your praises, so that in the gates of the daughter of Zion I may rejoice in your salvation. Verse 13 is a dramatic shift. Don't miss this. Help me. You see, David is not writing this psalm, David is not choosing to praise God's righteousness out of a place of perfect satisfaction with where he is in life. He's not writing this out of a place of ease. We're not told exactly what the historical situation is in our psalm heading, but I guarantee you this was not after he beat Goliath. This was not after he defeated the Philistine armies in one of his many impressive victories. It might have been after serving as a faithful general. His king Saul, jealous of him, tried to have him killed and he had to go on the run. Or maybe when his own firstborn son, when he was king, rose up and attempted to overthrow him. So once again, he had to go on the run. This is not 1 Samuel 17, David. This is 1 Samuel 19, David. Things are hard. He's not writing out of ease. See my affliction, you who lift me up from the gates of death. That's what David's feeling right now. He's feeling like he is at the gates of death. That's what he's feeling right now when he writes this. He says, so that I may recount all your praises, that in the gates of the daughter of Zion I may rejoice in your salvation. He says, please Lord, help me in my affliction, save me, deliver me, so that I may praise you, so that I may recount all your wonderful deeds, so that I might do all these things that I was already doing in the first twelve verses. Note that interesting order. He starts with praise. Then he prays and he asks God for help. Ask them for help so that I may get back to praising you, so that I might join my voice to what I've already been saying. He goes on in verses 15 to 17, turning back to praise, turning back to preaching to himself in a very real sense. The nations have sunk in the pit that they've made, in the net that they've hid. Their own foot has been caught. talking about poetic justice. We've all seen instances of this. We've all experienced it. We've seen where evil comes back on someone when foolishness and bad choices turn out badly. And we see that and we go, that's right, that's poetic, that's just. David's saying the Lord has made himself known. He has executed judgment. All those instances of poetic judgment, that's God at work. God is at work in that. The wicked are snared in the work of their own hands. That's God executing judgment. The wicked, they shall return to the grave. To Sheol, that's what the Sheol means. They'll go down to the grave. All these nations that forget God. In a very real sense, that's what the wicked are. They're those who have abandoned their creator. They're those who live in rebellion to their creator. They're those who forget God. And again, we have another one of those abrupt transitions. That word forget makes David shift. He says, for the needy, they'll not always be forgotten. He was just talking about the wicked, the nations who forget God, and now he says, but the needy, they won't always be forgotten. In verse 18, the hope of the poor, that won't perish forever. What do you hear when you hear that verse? Most obviously is the existence of the needy, who obviously feel like they're being forgotten. Or it seems like to the watching world that they're being forgotten. We see the existence of the hope of the poor, which is apparently perishing forever. It's apparently dead and vain. They have no hope. No hope. That might be what it looks like. David says, no, that's not true. It's not true. It won't perish forever. And all this affliction that David is experiencing and seeing and all this praise that he is choosing to engage in leads to his closing prayer in verses 19 through 20. Arise, O Lord. Let not man prevail. Let the nations be judged before you. Put them in fear, O Lord. Let the nations know that they are but men. That is a Christian prayer. That is a faith-filled prayer. That is not the type of thing you can pray in the face of affliction. That is not the type of thing you can pray in a place of feeling like the entire world is unjust unless you have real, solid faith. You might pray, God, help me nail this job interview. God, help me not get sick. Help me have a good day today. Thank you for the nice weather. But in the face of affliction, you have to have real faith to pray, arise, oh God, let not man prevail. David would not be able to pray that. He would not be able to end the psalm that way if not for the praise. You see, I kind of saved the main point of the psalm for now because I wanted you to see it. I wanted you to see it first. I didn't want to feed it to you. But the main point of this psalm is that praise strengthens faith. Our praise will strengthen our faith. It strengthens it by focusing on the most important realities. The most important truths. And in this case, the justice of God. You see, David's praise, in the midst of his affliction, it inspires and it strengthens his faith. You see, David's praise is speaking truth to a skewed reality. Because what I'm not saying this morning is, It doesn't matter. The world is chaotic. You can't make sense of it. It looks the same whether there is a God or there's not. No, that's not true. The world often feels chaotic. And we often don't understand what God is doing. And scripture recognizes this. And it recognizes our finiteness, which only makes sense. If God is God and we are who we are, then it makes sense that we aren't always going to understand We aren't always going to do the things that God does. We would say, I would do it differently. But it is not true that the world is totally chaotic and just completely unjust. And in fact, there is mountains upon mountains of constant evidence of the goodness and the righteousness and the justice of God. But in the midst of affliction, it is very easy to not see that stuff. It is very easy to not be thinking rightly. Right? We do this, right? You can have the best day in the world and then stub your toe and be like, this whole day was terrible. And you color everything about the past 24 hours to that one bad experience. We do this with life. We do this with reality. It's easy to miss, when we're suffering, the very clear, real examples and evidences of God's perfect justice and righteousness. And so, David's praise helps him speak truth to the skewed reality that he's feeling right now. It feels like the hope of the poor perishes forever. It feels like it's dead and vain. It feels like I'm forgotten, but that's not true. There's a reason why David starts with praise. He wouldn't be able to pray in faith if he didn't praise God. His praise strengthened his faith. His praise leads, our praise leads to faith-filled prayers like the one at the end of the psalm, like the one in verses 19 and 20. We won't be able to pray like that in our affliction if we haven't been praising God, if we haven't been reinforcing our trust in God by understanding what is really true. If we haven't burned into our hearts and minds the absolute fact of God's goodness, His righteousness, and His justice. And so, For the last half of the sermon, I want to do what Psalm 9 says. I want to praise God's righteousness. I want our faith this morning to be strengthened in the praise of who our God is and what he does. So I have, just as an example, three spheres where you can praise God's righteousness, and where I want to praise His righteousness this morning. The first sphere that you can praise God's righteousness is His righteousness revealed in Scripture, or revealed in redemptive history, revealed in the plan of salvation that He worked out, that's recorded for us in the Bible, that has brought us all here now to this point of serving and loving Him. So many examples, so many examples that you could pick from the Bible. And we should all be growing constantly in our knowledge of the biblical story so that we can continue to draw on these things, so that they can continue to encourage our faith. But of course, the primary exhibit of God's righteousness revealed in scripture is the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. None of us by rights could be the I in Psalm 9. None of us could say at every moment, you have maintained my just cause. Those ones, my enemies, they're the wicked ones. You can't say that every time. You probably can't say that most times. And you certainly can't say that ultimately. None of us by rights should be happy about the justice of God. We should be afraid. We're going to be among the wicked. we deserve to be stomped out if God is doing what's right and just. But we see God revealing in scripture his plan to save a people such as us. We see the display of his righteousness in the incarnation in Christ coming to earth. Jesus does what we couldn't and he earns what we didn't and then he shares it with us. Jesus earns heaven. Jesus earns an eternal reward and then he shares it with those who belong to him. And we see in everything that happened in his life constant reinforcement of the fact that God is righteous and just. When we wonder how can This kind of evil go on when we look around ourselves and say, why this? Remember the death of Christ. Remember that when our sins were accounted to Christ, that He had to die for it. The Son of God had to die because of our sins. And so whatever else is going on in the world, you know God the Father does not take sin lightly. God the Father does not brush sin under the rug. And we know that our Lord did not stay dead, but that he won new life for us. And he got up again. He walked out of that tomb in new life. And that gives us hope, because he's the first fruits. That means all of us who belong to him, we're going to participate in that too. So whatever else is going on, we have the hope of the resurrection because of the resurrection of Christ. It's worth reading and spending your time in apologetic materials. There's no shame in strengthening and encouraging your faith as you see the very many evidences, the solid foundation that we have for believing that Jesus did in fact rise from the dead. This is a historical fact. This is not just a theological image that we use. It's not a metaphor that Jesus Christ, he did physically, historically rise from the dead. That's an encouragement that we can cling to. We know God is righteous. We know that he is working out a good plan for his people. We know he takes sin seriously. We know that he rewards those who belong to him. We can hope in God's justice because of Christ. We also ought to be praising God for his righteousness revealed in history. It's not like history is a total mess. It's not like you can't see God's justice happening throughout all of history since Christ ascended into heaven. Church history, world history, God's righteousness is revealed in that. We need to remember Remind ourselves, celebrate. I picked one, just one for this morning, in line with Psalm 9. In Psalm 9, one of the things David praises is the fact that you have made the wicked perish. In verse 5, you blotted out their name forever and ever. The very memory of them has perished. We see that. We see that in history. You know, if you go to your average college course on religion, Christianity, the belief in the one true God, is going to be talked about in very bare sociological terms. Yahwehism, that's just another one of those cults in the ancient Near East. No different than the worship of Baal or Marduk or any other number of pagan tribal deities. People talk like that. People talk like that in my seminary. It's not special. Dime a dozen. All these little primitive religions. Can anyone tell me where the nearest church is off the top of your head? Besides our church, where the nearest church is off the top of your head? Can you think of it? I know most of you can because it's right next door. There's another church right next door, and then there's another church down that way a little bit, and another church down that way a little bit. Can anyone tell me where the nearest temple of Baal is? What about Marduk? You know in scripture, when the statue of Dagon was before the Ark of the Covenant, it fell over. It was broke. That has been happening in history ever since. What about Zeus? Jupiter? No one worships these gods anymore. When the gospel of Jesus Christ comes in contact with them, it obliterates them. They're forgotten. Think about it. Baalism was so prevalent, was such a strong force in the ancient Near East, that it regularly, regularly drew faithful Israelites away. It regularly drew covenant people away. It was such a powerful force in the culture. No one worships Baal anymore, anywhere in the world. Jesus is worshipped all over. Chinese, African, Europe, South America. Jesus Christ is recognized. Yahweh, the one true God, is recognized. False gods are consistently and regularly forgotten. Now, of course there are still false religions. I'm not saying, I'm not committing to a particular form of eschatology. I'm not saying you have to believe that before the end all people will mostly be Christians. We all, as Calvin said, our hearts are idol factories. We make new ones. But what you see in history is a pattern of God stomping out idols. We make new ones, but God wipes them out. We see that. And given what I know to be happening in India and China right now, what I'm about to say is like the least politically correct thing I've ever said from the pulpit, but Hinduism, Buddhism, your days are numbered. Have fun being a footnote in history. Islam, you're next. That's not Western imperialism. That's not my culture triumphing over yours. That's the triumph of the gospel of Jesus Christ, who is the rightful Lord of all people. False gods are forgotten. The name of the wicked is blot out forever and ever. Praise God for his righteousness revealed in history. The march of history. And then, finally, we ought to praise God for his righteousness revealed in our own lives. We need to remember and repeat the stories of our conversions. Or if we don't remember, if we were converted young, that's true, that happens. Still, remember the coming of the gospel into your family. Talk to your parents or grandparents. Repeat these things. I don't even follow this on advice. I'm saying it from the pulpit and I've got to follow this advice. We need to write these things down. Remember them. Write down all the times that God has provided for you, that he has demonstrated his care, that he has demonstrated that he is a stronghold for you. Write down all the circumstances of when you first heard the gospel, or when your father first heard the gospel, or if it was your grandfather. Who asked? Go. Don't let these things fade into time. Don't let the evidences of God's righteousness fade from your memory. Be able to repeat them. Be able to praise your family. Be able to teach your children about God's righteousness revealed in the history of your own individual lives. Write down all those times where God proved His law good, His word true. Don't forget this stuff. Praise God for His righteousness revealed in your life. Praise God for His righteousness revealed in history. Praise Him for His righteousness revealed in the plan of redemptive history, revealed in the Bible. Because it's only when we recognize the goodness of God in Jesus Christ, it's only when we recognize God's perfect righteousness displayed in Christ, when we recognize his hatred of sin, when we recognize the hope that we have in the righteousness of Christ counted for us, shared with us by our Lord, And when we see that confirmed over and over in the last 2,000 years, we see that confirmed over and over in our lives, it's only then that in the midst of deep affliction, When we bury friends and family that we shouldn't have buried, when we walk out of the doctor with a diagnosis we did not want to hear, only when we are concentrated, only when we have saturated ourselves with the righteousness of God and the truth of who He is and the truth of His justice, will we be able to stand up in faith and pray with David, arise, O Lord, let not man prevail. Let the nations be judged before you. Put them in fear, O Lord. Let the nations know that they are but men. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you for your goodness. I thank you for your righteousness. And I ask that you would help us to cling to it, that you would help us to know it, even when our circumstances make it difficult for us to see it. So I ask that When things are good and even when they're not, that we would continue to praise you, that we would continue to reinforce the truths that you are perfectly just and righteous, that you are good. I pray that we as a church, that we as families, that we as individuals would give you the glory and praise that you deserve. You are perfectly just. You are perfectly righteous. We thank you for sending your son. We do trust you. We know you take sin seriously. You took our sin seriously. Our Lord had to die for it, and we thank you. We thank you for that provision, and we thank you for his resurrection. We thank you for the promise of new life. Help us to cling to it in faith and prayer. We ask this all in Jesus' name. Amen.