If you would turn to Malachi chapter 2, and we're going to start at verse 17, which is the last verse of the chapter, and we're going to read from chapter 3, verse 5. I'll give you a minute to find Malachi. Of course, if you head to Matthew and go back a couple of pages, that would be sufficient. Malachi chapter 2 verse 17 through 3, 5. Hear the word of the Lord. You have wearied the Lord with your words, but you say, how have we wearied him? By saying, everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them. Or by asking, where is the God of justice? Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple, and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, he is coming, said the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like every finer spire and like fuller soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings and righteousness to the Lord. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old, as in former years. Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the idolaters, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker and his wages, the widow and fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner. And do not fear me, says the Lord closest. Sometimes I get a little fascinated by God's responses to man's queries or man's accusations. Maybe things that are probably off-putting to God, that is offensive to God. God sometimes has odd or interesting ways of responding. I mean, just consider a couple of examples. the disciples or the apostles are all gathered around Jesus in Acts 1 and he's up the mountain and he's about to ascend and they say, well, this is the time that you're going to restore Israel and I don't know, seemingly without hearing their question, he says, what I want you to do is I want you to go to Jerusalem and I want you to wait and the Holy Spirit's going to come upon you and you're going to become my witnesses. In other words, if you read the question, you read the answer, you would think, well, Did he hear the question? Or, you know, that's kind of an odd answer for that question. Or, you know, maybe a better one, too, is, you know, Jesus at the wedding at Cana, you know, where, you know, he's just there as a guest, and his mother walks up to him and says, hey, they ran out of wine. I mean, I don't know, just humanly speaking, you know, you think, well, Okay. There's a store down the road. I mean, yeah, but... And he says, like, the kind of the strangest thing, you know. In fact, in our culture, it's kind of offensive. He says, woman, what's that have to do with me? It's kind of interesting, you get these questions, and maybe you accept one kind of an answer, and you get something different. And we spot something like that here. I mean, imagine this. Here are these Jewish folks, and they are now accusing God of complete injustice. They just say, God, you are an unjust God, you seem to delight in wickedness, and you seem to just let it go unpunished. Well, I don't know. To me, maybe if I were God, thankfully I'm not, but if I were God, maybe my response would be scorched-earth policy. You know, how dare you accuse me, the most high God of, injustices? Just, you know, okay, done with it. I think you don't have to do that. Rather, he says, well, okay, if I'm being unjust, I'm going to come and visit you. So then you think, okay, well maybe that's not going to be a good thing, but yet he says, I'm going to come to visit you, and I'm going to purify you. And I'll bring judgment to you, but you get this sense that even in his great and immense justice, he's not coming to do a scorched-earth policy. And so you have this, if you will, odd answer in response to this accusation. God, you're unjust. And probably all the while, the whole thing is actually a justification of God's true justice, but nonetheless, not the answer that you might suppose. And so he gives this beautiful answer, and probably the lengthiest part of this passage deals with the fact that he's going to come in mercy and grace to purify this group of the Levites, even though he particularly singles out, but it would have extrapolated into the people as well. And so he shows himself, probably what we read this morning out of the Romans, he shows himself to be not only a just, but the justifier of man. And we see both happening here, and yet he's the justifier of men. His redemptive work, again the main bulk of this passage, his redemptive work provides great assurance for us in this life, that we know that which he did. You have been redeemed, those who profess faith, you have been redeemed. You've been redeemed from the guilt of sin. And so you should have a full, fast confession of faith. You should have hope without wavering. And that, I think, is what this passage is going to be pointing to. That because you've been redeemed from the rebuke, that you should, in fact, be able to hold fast to this confession of hope without wavering. Let's look at the passage here, verse 17. Humanity's accusation, God is unjust. You have wearied the Lord with your words, but you say, how have we wearied Him? By saying, everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delights in them. Or by asking, where is the God of justice? Now this is the fifth dissertation in this book. And if you remember, we said that there were seven disputations totaled with an ending conclusion, so there's eight passages to this book. This one is the one after the middle one. The fourth one would be the middle disputation, and now we're going to see five tonight and then six and seven. And what's interesting is... I'm not going to bore you with great Hebrew literary structure, but there seems to be a chiastic structure to the whole entire book in which, you know, Disputation I and Disputation VII are going to have some similarities, and II and VI are going to have some similarities, and III and V are going to have some similarities, with the one in the middle sort of being the ultimate or the middle one. And here we actually see this a little bit, this fifth disputation kind of corresponds a little bit to the third one, which was chapter two, verses one through nine. And it corresponds in a couple of ways there. The priests were corrupt messengers. and they had broken the covenant with Levi. The disputation here is that there would come actually two messengers, one would be actually the Lord himself, and that he would talk about or, if you will, initiate a new covenant. He says he would talk about the covenant, but the sense is that it's not going to be a breaking of the covenant, it's going to be the making of the covenant. And so you begin to see that even as Malachi is sort of working this out, as he's writing out these disputations, there seems to be either fulfillment or the opposite happening, even as we work our way to the end of the book. And that's what we seem to be happening right here. Nonetheless, though, the main thrust of the accusation of this disputation is that God is unjust. And that's what verse 17 deals with. And that he is unjust because he does not punish evil. and that he seems to delight in the fact that evil is happening, and that's pretty straightforward stuff. That is something that I think perennially humanity deals with. The cry against God because he's unjust, that's an argument for the lack of God's existence, that he doesn't exist because there's all this evil in the world. In other words, they're saying the same thing that these folks were saying. that God doesn't seem to do anything about evil or to evil people means that he doesn't actually exist or he's not really that good of a God. I mean, so these folks, I mean, we think about this, you know, if I didn't mention these folks, we would be thinking about these folks more as atheists or, you know, something like that. These are the kinds of people that make extremely these types of accusations. And yet these people are making that same accusation that God seemingly is letting evil go. And that is the very heart of this disputation. That is it. And that's the accusation. The Lord is weary from this because he has put up with listening to them make these accusations time and time again. And he will have an answer here in just a minute. But when you begin to think about this, you know, we don't want to take this and spin this out, you know, because, you know, as I just mentioned, it's easy to say it's always, you know, those people over there. It's those, you know, pesky atheists out there who do this. I would venture to say that all of us have gone through very challenging times in our lives and probably, if we've never uttered the words, we've certainly thought about this, God, that is not fair that you have done this to me. You know, something like that. And so before we, you know, we kind of slap the label on those folks, we have to keep in mind that we would stand here guilty, you know, our mouths soft as well, because I'm sure that all of us, including me, have stood before God and said, well, that's not fair. Why are you doing this and not this? Why aren't you getting those people? Why are you letting this happen to me? Don't you know who I am? Don't you know what I've done for you? Don't you recognize that I am, you know, and we've all done this. And so we stand guilty as much as these folks stand guilty. That is, that we have cried out to God that he's an unjust God because we don't have the view that God has. And so from our perspective, he's unjust. But what's God's response in all this? Well, he has sort of a layered response to it, but his response begins in chapter 3, verse 1a. He just has one sentence. Behold, I will send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. This should conjure up all kinds of things for us. I mean, first of all, God's response is, I am coming. So if you want to meet with me, if you want to talk with me, well, I'm about to visit you. But the emphasis is not that, it just clues us in that He is going to be coming, but He has this messenger that He's going to be sending ahead of time to prepare the way. So, as I mentioned earlier, rather than this unmitigated fury and scorched earth that maybe you or I, particularly me, might have, the Lord responds with, well, let me talk to you, let's show up and we'll have this conversation. And so the Lord responds by offering a sign, I will send a messenger. And this messenger will have a preparatory work in which he will prepare the way for me. Now, I've mentioned this some time ago and I want to mention it again. The title of our book, Malachi, actually is Hebrew for my messenger. And so, once more we have actually in this verse, when the Lord here says to Malachi, I will send my messenger, the word looks like, well, Malachi. So it's not being used as a proper name, but it's being used as if, I will send my messenger. So this begins to kind of unravel a little bit, because Malachi here is already the messenger that the Lord has sent to give these messages, and yet he's saying, I'm going to send another messenger, and this messenger will have this other thing to do, which is to prepare the way. So he would have another, a second messenger after Malachi, should that be, and we dealt with this some time ago, but should that have been this prophet's name rather than more of his title. It could have been his title, but we've seen it as his name, and there's no problem with seeing it as his name. But nonetheless, this passage is quoted three times in the New Testament. It's quoted in Mark chapter 1, verse 2, Matthew 11, 10, and Luke 7, 27. All in clear connection to John the Baptist. So, it is very clear that when here in Malachi, the Lord says to Malachi, I will send my messenger, there is a very self-conscious effort in the New Testament to say this messenger who has come to prepare the way is John the Baptist. Now, I say that because in Mark 1, verse 2, Mark actually conflates I think it's Isaiah 40 and Malachi 3.1. He conflates them. He says the prophet Isaiah says, and he puts these two prophecies together and then says, here's John the Baptist. But the other two in Matthew and Luke, which would be parallel passages, it's Jesus who is giving the identification to John, which would say a lot about Jesus. Because remember, these people, if they have followed him around for any length of time, Jesus, now sometime in the middle of his ministry, has said... The context in Matthew and Luke is when John the Baptist has sent messengers to Jesus, John's in jail, and he has said, are you really the one? And Jesus says, well, you know, go and tell John this, you know, tell him these things. And then after these guys go back, he turns to the crowd and he says, well, what did you guys want to see? You know, you got to see a wreath shaking in the wind, you got to see a man clothed in fine clothes or something like that. And then, you know, he goes on to say, no, I'm not going to tell you who John was. John was the messenger that would come to prepare the way. Now, again, that should do several things for these people. They should know that God was standing in their midst. And that's what the prophecy is. I'm going to send my messenger, the Lord says, to prepare the way for me. This is God's life. So there were all kinds of claims being made at that very moment. Now they should have also recognized that whoever God was standing in their midst, that Jesus was also that second messenger that's going to be talked about next. So in other words, when Jesus very, very self-consciously identifies John as this messenger, he is telegraphing not only something about himself, but he's telegraphing something about John the Baptist as well. That he wasn't just some crazy guy standing up in the desert or near these pools of water, slapping water on people. He was someone. He was my messenger sent to prepare the way for me. Every single person standing there should have thought of Malachi chapter 3 verse 1. And they should have thought of something else. They should have thought of the context which was God being accused of being unjust and His coming to visit them to prove that He is not an unjust God. And that's where we have it right here, just in this one section. So we know something about Jesus' own self-identification by him saying, this is who John was, we know something about John as well. This is what this prophecy points to. So John serves then as evidence of fulfilled prophecy. It speaks of Jesus' self-identification. Very, very important thing when you're working through things like apologetics. You know, when you're working through something like, well, you know, how does this Old Testament and New Testament fit together? Or, you know, lots of people like to say that Jesus' own identification, his self-identification was that he didn't know that he was the Messiah. Or, you know, this is something that, this is more like popular fiction stuff, or Jesus seminar folks, that, you know, his messianic identity came sometime down the road. It was all the church's fault that he has this messianic identity. Well, Jesus himself, in the very words that he speaks, says, no, no, no, my identification, my self-identification is, I am the Lord. He's John, and he was sent to prepare the way for me. So, keep this in mind, that God is talking here. And the messenger goes, and my messenger is preparing the way for God himself to show up. Well, this further is pressed home in just the second part of this verse, and then in verse two. So part B of this verse, he goes on to say, And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple, and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like every fire's fire, and like fooler's soap. Now further, this is pressed home now, with further identification of the second messenger, And it's apparent that two messengers are in view, and I'm not going to have to make that case, I mean, it's apparent that there seems to be two different messengers, but there are two there. There's the first one who prepared the way, and then there's the second one who would come and be this refiner, fire, and such. And yet it's also apparent, as we consider this part of this verse, that now the Lord God is speaking of this person who would come in the third person. You know, at first he was speaking in the first person. The Lord, the messenger prepared to wait for me, God says. Now he says, the Lord whom you seek, he's going to come to this temple. Suddenly the tenses shift from I to him. Well, that's very interesting. Because, you know, there really couldn't possibly be some understanding of the Trinity before sometime late in the 4th century AD. There just couldn't possibly be, right? That was also made up sometime around the Council of BC or something like that. I mean, that's all the stuff that was just all made up, right? No, it wasn't made up. It was in fact, now here is the Lord God the Father. saying, Him, He will come. You know, so when Jesus is on the earth here, and He's making these crazy and outlandish statements like, you know, I and my Father are one, or I do the will of my Father, and the Pharisees are yanking out their hair and just, you know, utterly freaking out and having a conniption, well, when Jesus accuses them of not knowing the Scriptures, He means they didn't know the Scriptures. I mean, Malachi 3.1b here is very apparent that now the Father is speaking of someone else who is God. Does that make sense? He's speaking of a separate and distinct person who would be the one who would come. And yet he has referred to him already as me. the God of heaven and earth. This is further pressed home by Malachi's use of LORD. If you notice, this is one of the few times that L-O-R-D is not capitalized in the Bible. This is where we have all of our crazy fits because we won't say Jehovah or Yahweh or something like that. Our Bibles just don't translate it, so they capitalize LORD. Well, here it's not capitalized, just the L is capitalized. LORD, it's atomized. God in the Old Testament rarely referred to that in that way. He is referred to that. But in the New Testament, all that Jesus is Lord stuff is picked up as Jesus as Lord. It's sort of pressed home that this Lord that he's referring to here is the Lord that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians chapter 11. I'm sorry, 12 verse 3, or that Peter talks about in chapter 2 of Acts verse 36, that Jesus was declared Lord. This is what he's talking about here. So now we have, in fact, the God of heaven and earth, the Father, saying the Lord will come to his temple. And so we kind of press this home that there are some fine nuances here, even as we look at this verse. So, in other words, we see, we don't see a mention of the Holy Spirit, but particularly we see here the mention of two persons who are God. The Father who is speaking and this Lord who would come to his temple. And we also see something like this, there's another implication here, that Judah should have been expecting God to show up so that when Jesus makes statements about his divinity, it really shouldn't have been something that was terribly surprising. I mean, it's kind of straightforward here that that is the case. Now, I'm not saying that if, you know, somebody claiming to be the divine walked through the door, that that wouldn't be troubling to me. I'm not suggesting that at all. But I am suggesting that they were at least prepared, and when they saw John, they should have been even more ready to receive the Lord, which means that their rejection of him all the worse, that the signs were given and given and given, and they continuously rejected him. And further, as verse two indicates, the Lord's coming, which was something that it says here that they desired, probably because they desired him to come and justify his lack of dealing with the unrighteous, something they desired for him to come and do. Well, it indicates that it wouldn't be as favorable as they thought. You know, if in fact every single one of us, including all of these folks, have really stood here and said that God is unjust in one way or another, we've accused God of that or questioned His justice, you know, it wouldn't be something desirable to have God show up if in fact that would be the case. And He says, you desire this, but it's not going to be exactly like you think. And so we see that played out in the New Testament as well, in the Gospels. It's not what they think. And normally it's not what they think, but they don't receive him. Now that's not everybody, some do. Many don't. But many who should have actually known this were at the head of the line for rejecting him. Which is all the more sad because they knew this stuff. They read it regularly. Many of them may have even had it memorized. And yet, when he shows up, I mean, you think about, you know, who can stand, who can endure this day. Think about some of the things that Jesus did. You know, he wreaked havoc in the temple. He did things like that. And they couldn't stand that. You know, he went to one place and he cast out this legion of demons out of his manhood. Those people couldn't stand that. You know, they just couldn't endure this day. They couldn't handle it. The Lord comes to his temple and makes covenant. He comes to his temple, he suddenly comes to his temple and the messenger of the covenant, in whom ye delight, behold, he is coming. Now this second messenger would come to a temple and he would be some kind of a messenger about a covenant. He would deal with some kind of covenant. Now, it's well documented in the New Testament, in the Gospels particularly, that Jesus went to the temple. He was there at his birth, you know, for the offering. He was there to death. He was there when he was 12, and you get the impression that, at least as a minor, he was there regularly every year with his parents, at the end of that 12-year-old story that we get. Jesus was at the temple. He went there for feasts. He didn't live at the temple, but we know that he came to the temple. We also know that he, as I just mentioned, cleansed the temple. Possibly on two occasions, if John's account is early and the other ones are late. So he wreaked the havoc that it said who could endure his coming to his temple. And he spoke of covenants as well, or a covenant as well. I would like to suggest to you one further coming to a temple. And that's out of Hebrews chapter 9, verse 11. I want you to turn there for a minute. Because I think that while his coming to the temple, the earthly temple, was in fact sufficient enough for fulfillment, that he come to his temple. The author of Hebrews says that he actually came to a different temple as well. In verse 11 he says, But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, this tabernacle, not made with him, that is, not of his creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God. Now, I want to suggest something to you, and I'm not trying to be cute or coy or something like that, but do you notice that in the context of Malachi, that this one who would come to his temple would actually come to purify? I looked at the words, and the Hebrew word in the Septuagint, or in the Greek, is the same word that is used right here. Now, there's nothing enlightening about that, it's the word, to purify, but I think it's very interesting that he comes here to a temple, and by the sacrifice of himself, that he purifies a people. Now, again, I'm not trying to be cute or coy, but I am suggesting to you that the writer of Hebrews says that he's going to come and he's going to do a very particular work, he's going to purify. And the writer of Hebrews here says very, very clearly that he comes to purify, but he does this by his blood. Now, I think what's also interesting is this, that when Jesus comes to talk about the covenant, he does so really on one real major occasion, and that's the Last Supper, when he takes the cup and he says, this is the new covenant in my blood. And he keeps making references here in Hebrews, here at the Last Supper, he makes reference to the fact that this covenant is in his blood and his blood purifies. Now, could the author, could Malachi have understood all this? I don't think he could have understood it. But certainly I think that he is looking forward to a time when something more than just an earthly temple was cleared out of a few cages and some coin racks to be put back the next week. I mean, it's not like we have record of the fact that Judas came and cleansed the temple and he purified it so that then all was made well. In fact, not too long hence from the very moment that he did that, a generation, about 40 years, the whole place was leveled. I mean, you can still look at it, there's like one half of a wall standing. That's it. So I don't get the sense that fully and completely that his coming to a temple to purify was the day that he overturned some tables. But the author of Hebrews says that he did come to a temple, not one made with hands, to make purifications of a particular people. And I think that that ultimately is what he's talking about here. Both that he makes a new covenant in his blood and that he purifies in the same way. And he affects two outcomes, that the elect here would receive grace and mercy, and that the non-elect would be judged. And that's what we see in the last couple of sections here in verses 3 and 4. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi, and refine them like gold and silver. They will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old, as in former years. God is just. God is just because he punishes Christ to redeem us from guilt. That's what Hebrews is alluding to. That's what Malachi is alluding to. That's what Hebrews tells us very specifically. The first effect of the Lord's coming is that he would be like refiner's fire and like fuller silk. Really what you have here is this. You have the idea that in this refiner's fire and in this gold and silver, this process of burning out these impurities, that there's some intensity to it. You know, it's kind of like not just brushing away some dirt. There's an intensity to it. It takes fire in order to purify this. And this idea here is this very strong lie in which they would take the clothes and they would put them in this lie detergent, and then they would put them on a rock and beat all the dirt out of them, not dumping them in a machine that agitates for you. Nothing against that, but that's not what this is talking about. In other words, there was something that was going on here that he would do something in order to make purification. And these two metaphors are given, this refiner's fire and this fuller soap that would clean. So one would purify intensely through fire and the other would be cleaned, if you will, by soap. That same word, purify, here, as I mentioned in the Septuagint, is purified, same word, same idea, same religion behind it, in Hebrews chapter 9. Where in Hebrews chapter 9, it's very specifically talking about how the blood of Christ redeems us from the guilt of our sin. That's the purification that it is speaking about, that He no longer holds to us, against us, those who have faith in Him, the penalty for our sins. He paid that penalty, not you. Hence, God is just, because He punished sin, but He didn't punish sin in you, He punished sin in Christ, which then caused the ability to be purified and refined and clean. God is just. Blood had to be shed for this to happen. Death had to happen for this to happen. God is just. And He's just one other way as well. He will punish the wicked. The second effect of this punishment is that He will punish the wicked, verse 5. Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in his wages. The widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner and do not fear me, says the Lord of Hosts. Did Judas seek a just God? Well, he is a just God. He would punish the wicked. Make no mistake about it. And while each of these sins that he lists in front of an exhaustive list, more of an ad hoc list, possibly, things that were going on at this time, each one is heinous in its own right. But collectively, they seem to all fall under that last phrase there, that these folks who practice these things do not fear me. But as we come to the New Testament, and probably the same problem that these folks had in accusing God of being unjust is the same problem that many of us have today in accusing God of being unjust. And that is, well, God, if you keep saying that you're going to do it, so how about snap to it? Because when you think about it, He says, I'm going to come swiftly, and here's what I'm going to do. But when He comes, He doesn't. Swiftly do it. He does them. He does that which makes purification. He alludes to, and I think we even heard a little bit of this this morning and probably last week as well, that yes, there is a foreshadowing of judgment. I mean, certainly that Christians would take notice on that day and that time in 70 A.D. when they saw Jerusalem falling before their eyes, when that thing was being sacked and just left to be discarded. Certainly at that moment, you would think, well, God is a just God. He brought judgment, and yet there was still wickedness all around. So in other words, we're always left in this tension. The folks in the Old Testament were left in this tension, and you and I are left in this tension. And that is that we continuously see while we are on this earth only the signaling or the foreshadowing of that which is to come. And in other words, what it should be doing to us is driving us to know that it is coming for sure. Often the effect that it has on us is the opposite. We say, well, it's not enough. What about those people over there? They deserve it too. And what about those people over there? They deserve it too. You know, in other words, we're looking for the ultimate justice. And God keeps saying, if coming, I am in just God. Here, did you see this empire fall? Everyone was expecting that to happen, isn't it? You know, Rome was pre-fortified. One day it just ceased to exist. In fact, it was such a compelling thing. Augustine wrote a whole book about it. It's about 900 pages. That's how awesome of a thing the fact that Rome came crashing down, that people could not deal with the fact that Rome would cease to exist as they knew Rome. They had to write a whole book about it. It's called The City of God. Why? Why did God let this happen? I read that book the other time. If you get through it, let me know. It's a good read. But seriously, we're continuously put to this place where we have to continuously live in this tension. We get a signal of it, but it's not complete yet. But know this, God is just. And we know God is just because He showed up one day, and when He showed up, He made Himself a sacrifice on this cross, so that you can be purified. That wasn't the only thing that it did. It set in motion the final judgment as well, so that one day, all will come to judgment. He's a just God. He punishes Christ, and He'll punish the wicked as well. This redemption that you have, this thing that Malachi has talked about, that Christ has done for you, should allow your confession of faith to be such that you have hope without wavering. I didn't say that, that's actually from Hebrews, the same place where all of this is told to us. In other words, the writer of Hebrews says, here's one of the ways, and the only way, and not certainly the only thing that we have for assurance, but he says, here, look to this. Know that that, exactly what I said would happen. Because here it is. Right here, it's the cross. Look to it. And you'll know. Everything that I say is true. God is a just God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your assurance to us that, in fact, you are a just God. And Lord, we thank you that we can come here and look to you. And we thank you that we can come here and receive assurance that in fact you will do that which you do. Lord, should there be any here who have not looked to you, who have not received you, not resting you, Lord, I pray that tonight will be the night. Lord, I pray that in this very time, Lord, I pray that. And Lord, I pray also, even as we go, that you would go with us and be with us each day until we gather again together next week. Lord willing. Lord, we thank and praise you for this and pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.