[0:00] 2 Samuel chapter 22. I'm going to read the whole chapter for us this morning. David sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul.
[0:18] He said, The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer. My God is my rock in whom I take refuge. My shield and the horn of my salvation.
[0:32] He is my stronghold, my refuge and my savior. From violent people you save me. I call to the Lord who is worthy of praise and have been saved from my enemies.
[0:43] The waves of death swirled about me. The torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me. The snares of death confronted me.
[0:55] In my distress, I call to the Lord. I called out to my God. From his temple he heard my voice. My cry came to his ears. The earth trembled and quaked.
[1:07] The foundations of the heavens shook. They trembled because he was angry. Smoke rose from his nostrils. Consuming fire came from his mouth. Burning coals blazed out of it.
[1:18] He parted the heavens and came down. Dark clouds were under his feet. He mounted the cherubim and flew. He soared on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his canopy around him.
[1:29] The dark rain clouds of the sky. Out of the brightness of his presence, bolts of lightning blazed forth. The Lord thundered from heaven. The voice of the Most High resounded.
[1:41] He shot his arrows and scattered the enemy. With great bolts of lightning he routed them. The valleys of the sea were exposed. And the foundations of the earth laid bare.
[1:52] At the rebuke of the Lord. At the blast of breath from his nostrils. He reached down from on high and took hold of me. He drew me out of deep waters.
[2:03] He rescued me from my powerful enemy. From my foes who were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster. But the Lord was my support. He brought me out into a spacious place.
[2:15] He rescued me because he delighted in me. The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness. According to the cleanness of my hands he has rewarded me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord.
[2:28] I am not guilty of turning from my God. All his laws are before me. I have not turned away from his decrees. I have been blameless before him and have kept myself from sin. The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness.
[2:42] According to the cleanness. To my cleanness in his sight. To the faithful you show yourself faithful. To the blameless you show yourself blameless. To the pure you show yourself pure.
[2:54] But to the devious you show yourself shrewd. You save the humble but your eyes are on the haughty to bring them low. You Lord are my lamp. The Lord turns my darkness into light.
[3:07] With your help I can advance against a troop. With my God I can scale a wall. As for God his way is perfect. The Lord's word is flawless. He shields all who take refuge in him.
[3:19] For who is a God besides the Lord? And who is the rock except our God? It is God who arms me with strength and keeps my way secure. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer.
[3:30] He causes me to stand on the heights. He trains my hands for battle. My arms can bend a bow of bronze. You make your saving help my shield. Your help has made me great.
[3:42] You provided a broad path for my feet. So that my ankles do not give way. I pursued my enemies and crushed them. I did not turn back till they were destroyed.
[3:53] I crushed them completely and they could not rise. They fell beneath my feet. You armed me with strength for battle. You humbled my adversaries before me. You made my enemies turn their backs in flight.
[4:05] And I destroyed my foes. They cried for help but there was no one to save them. To the Lord but he did not answer. I beat them as fine as the dust of the earth. I pounded and trampled them like mud in the streets.
[4:19] You have delivered me from the attacks of the peoples. You have preserved me as the head of nations. People I did not know now serve me. Foreigners cower before me. As soon as they hear of me they obey me.
[4:31] They lose all heart. They come trembling from their strongholds. The Lord lives. Praise be to my rock. Exalted be my God.
[4:42] The rock my saviour. He is the God who avenges me. Who puts the nations under me. Who sets me free from my enemies. You exalted me from my foes.
[4:53] From a violent man you rescued me. Therefore I will praise you Lord among the nations. I will sing the praises of your name. He gives his king great victories. He shows unfailing kindness to his anointed.
[5:07] To David and his descendants forever. Well this is God's word. Let's pray as we come and look at it together. Let's pray. Heavenly Father our longing desire is that we might hear you speak from your words to us this morning.
[5:26] We pray that your Holy Spirit who inspired these words might now be at work in me as I speak. All of us as we listen.
[5:37] That we may encounter you and hear you speak. That you might change and transform us. That you might comfort us and strengthen us. That you might rebuke, encourage, equip us to live lives to your praise and glory.
[5:51] In Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Well if you've been with us for the last few months you'll know that we are coming towards the end of our series in 2 Samuel.
[6:03] And we noticed last time which was a couple of weeks ago now. That we're in essentially what is the conclusion of the book. So the material towards the end of 2 Samuel is not organized necessarily chronologically.
[6:13] But thematically as the writer draws everything to a conclusion. And at the heart of his conclusion is a song of David and David's final words. So if you've looked at much of the Bible before, it doesn't matter if you haven't.
[6:27] But if you have, you might know that David is a famous songwriter. He is probably the Bible's most famous songwriter. He wrote a lot of the Psalms. You might know that he played the harp for Saul.
[6:39] You might remember that he danced in front of the ark. He is a musical kind of guy. And you know, don't you, that the best way to enjoy a song is what?
[6:52] Sing it, right? Yeah, so that's how you enjoy songs. You sing along. You sing along to a song. And the best way to ruin a song is to explain it. Yeah? And so it's like a joke.
[7:02] The best way to ruin a joke is to explain it. And so I'm conscious this morning that really I want us to be able to echo David's words and sing along. So whilst trying not to ruin the vibe this morning, I do want us to look at the content of what David sings here so that we can join in with him as he sings.
[7:19] Or maybe even dance along with him, if that's appropriate later, maybe. Anyway, I want you to see that basically there are three parts to his song. The song has a beginning, a middle, and an end, right?
[7:31] Like all good songs and essays, a beginning, a middle, and an end. And the beginning is all about David's personal victories. And the end is all about the victories of his army over the nations. And the middle is all about him and why God saved him.
[7:46] And that's where I want us to start, in the middle, in verses 21 to 37. And I want us to look at it under this title, What is Blamelessness? What is Blamelessness?
[7:56] Now, like I said, to this point, David has been singing about the great victories that God has won for him. So if you look down at the passage, you'll see verse 20 that he has been brought into a spacious place.
[8:07] He has been rescued because the Lord delighted in him. And these middle verses, David explains why God has continued to rescue him over and over again, why he delights in him.
[8:18] And he says in verse 21 that God has dealt with him according to his righteousness. That the great victories are a reward, he says, for the cleanness of his hands.
[8:29] If you look down at verse 22, you'll notice that he says he has kept the ways of the Lord. That he has not been guilty of turning from God. In verse 23, he says his laws were before him.
[8:42] So much so that in verse 24, he says, sort of summarizing, I have been blameless before him and have kept myself from sin. Now, I don't want to assume that you've been paying attention in our series in the book of 2 Samuel.
[8:56] But if you have been, you should be wondering, oh my goodness, David, have you slightly lost touch with reality here? Do you actually know what you have been doing for the last 21 chapters?
[9:09] Do you know what's been going on? Perhaps he's just gone a little bit senile towards the end of his life. Because you know, if you know the story, don't you? You know that David murdered a guy.
[9:21] A guy called Uriah the Hittite. And he murdered Uriah the Hittite because he got Uriah the Hittite's wife pregnant, Bathsheba. Now, those kind of things are a big deal.
[9:33] He then basically failed over and over to discipline his wayward children who ended up causing havoc. Siblings ended up raping one another, murdering one another. They even staged a coup against his rule.
[9:47] So when you come to this song, you know, you come to this song that Dave's written at the end of his life, you perhaps expect him to be singing about disappointments. Oh Lord, you know, my life has not been quite what I hoped it would have been.
[9:58] My family's not quite worked out as I would have hoped that they would have worked out. I've made lots of mistakes. But in fact, as you look at the song, you find that actually instead he's singing of his blamelessness.
[10:10] His blamelessness. Now, you might be thinking, oh, I know this, Steve, right? I know what you're going to say. I've encountered this before. This, Steve, this is that doctrine that you were talking about a few weeks ago from David.
[10:24] You were talking about justification by faith, weren't you? I know this. That's what David's talking about, isn't it? This truth that the Bible teaches through and through, that basically through faith in Jesus Christ, sinners like us, like David, people who have sinned against God and gone their own way can be justified, declared not guilty because sinless Jesus stands in our place at the cross.
[10:49] The Bible says that for the Christian, their sin has been, it uses kind of, the term is imputed. It's like passed on to, counted as.
[10:59] So our sin is passed on, imputed to Jesus. And Jesus' righteousness, his goodness, his rightness has been imputed, passed on to us. So that the Christian can say, in the eyes of God, I'm covered in Jesus' rightness.
[11:13] Whiteness. So I'm perfect. I've never, it looks like I've never done anything wrong. Now that's true, right? Justification by faith is probably the most important doctrine in the scriptures.
[11:26] But I'm not sure that's what David means here. And I don't think that's what he means because that's not what he says. Instead, what seems to be going on is that David actually looks back at his life, at his time as king, and sees that in an important sense, he has been blameless.
[11:41] And that's because blameless in the Bible doesn't always mean sinlessly perfect. Blameless in the Bible often means wholehearted, as in trusting completely in the Lord.
[11:55] Solomon, who comes after David, Solomon is David's son who comes after him. And we're told about him in 1 Kings 11, verse 6, that Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord.
[12:06] He did not follow the Lord completely as David, his father, had done. The sense here is that Solomon was not quite like David because David wholly followed, completely followed the Lord.
[12:21] Blamelessness of David was not mirrored by Solomon. To give you more examples, the Old Testament character Job, if you know him, was called blameless by God, as God talks to Satan about him in the opening chapters of the book.
[12:36] And it doesn't mean, look at what Job has become because I justified him, but rather, no, look at Job. He is a man who wholeheartedly follows me. He's devoted to me.
[12:48] Job later on calls himself blameless. Again, not meaning sinless because he's repenting of his sin in the same narrative. Daniel calls himself blameless. Says it's why the Lord rescued him from the lions, even though again and again we see him praying and praying prayers of repentance.
[13:04] The Psalms sing of blamelessness like this. The book of Proverbs instructs us to be blameless like this. Not because the book of Proverbs expects us to be sinlessly perfect, but because it wants us to and expects us to wholeheartedly trust in the Lord.
[13:16] It's the same in the New Testament when in Philippians 2 verses 14 to 15, Paul tells the people to stop grumbling so that they may become what? Blameless and innocent children of God.
[13:30] Not because stopping grumbling is the same as putting your faith in Jesus and being declared righteous by him, but because grumbling is a common sin of God's people which betrays a lack of wholehearted trust in God, who is in charge of all the things you grumble about.
[13:44] Don't be like that. Be blameless. It's the same idea in 1 Timothy chapter 3, when the leaders of the church are told to be above reproach or blameless. Not simply meaning that the leaders in the church are to be Christians, that's kind of an obvious statement, isn't it?
[13:58] But rather they are to be wholehearted in their following of Jesus. Dale Ralph Davis, who's written a commentary on these verses, says this, when David speaks of his righteousness and purity, he does not point to sinless perfection, but life direction.
[14:15] He's not sporting a pharisaical pride over errorless obedience, but expressing a faithful loyalty via consistent obedience. All of this is important for it is such faithful, wholehearted, though afflicted servants that the Lord delights to rescue, and who can then revel in the power and safety that the Lord has provided.
[14:37] David here, he's looking back across his life and he says, Do you know, I've always, I've always wanted to walk with the Lord. I've always been walking towards him.
[14:50] I've always been following the Lord. I might not have done it perfectly, but I've done it wholeheartedly. It's what I've always wanted. Let me try and illustrate what's going on, just to give you a bit of time to think and ponder on this some more.
[15:05] I want you to imagine that you're walking to Buckingham Palace. You probably wouldn't walk. You'd probably catch the bus, I know. But anyway, imagine if you were walking. It's not actually that far to walk. But if you were walking to Buckingham Palace, you've got an appointment with a king, perhaps.
[15:19] You're determined. You've got to get to the palace. You've got to meet with a king. He wants to see you. But as you start off down Carlton Vale, you get down there and you get a little bit distracted by Paddington Rec.
[15:30] So you go and, you know, you throw a ball in Paddington Rec for a bit. And then you end up walking a little bit through Maida Vale, past Little Venice and Paddington Station. It's probably not the quickest way. And then you notice that there's, you know, McDonald's in Paddington.
[15:41] And so you get diverted there for a moment. And then you carry on down the Edgway Road to Marble Arch. And then at High Park Corny, take a left instead of a right. You end up at Harrods instead of Buckingham Palace.
[15:53] But then you cut around the back and you end up eventually at Buckingham Palace. And as you look back from the doors of Buckingham Palace, what you say is, I've always wanted to arrive here.
[16:05] I have been determinedly walking here all morning. I've made some mistakes along the way. But as I look back, my determination was always to walk towards the palace.
[16:16] Not towards Heathrow Airport, but always towards Buckingham Palace. Now, in a sense, and it doesn't quite work all the way through, but that's what's going on here. David's godliness is not so much that he's achieved a level and says, right, I've got the badge of honour now.
[16:32] No, what it is, is that he has been walking in this direction in his life. I have been walking towards the Lord, says David. Not in my own strength.
[16:44] Not blazing a trail of my own, but humbly trusting in God. Verse 28. And so the whole song is about how God has been his strength to get him to glory. God has made David wholehearted.
[16:57] He has given him a wholehearted heart that unswervingly wants to follow the Lord. Even if his way has been marked by failure and weakness. And so David sings. Always wanted to be with the Lord.
[17:10] I've always wanted to follow him. And God has enabled me. And God has won great victories. Now, let me suggest, just before we go any further in the song, it's worth us just thinking about that some more.
[17:23] That at the conclusion of everything that's happened, David's singing out the book. This is his central piece of advice to you, to me. You know, this is the theme of his song, if you like, as he sings at the end of the book.
[17:36] He says, listen, this is what I want you to know about life. The thing that you will sing about at the end of your life, if you've done it, is to walk wholeheartedly with the Lord.
[17:47] That's what life is for. That's what it's about. That's it. Lean into what God is doing in you as a Christian by his spirit. He's given you a new heart that loves him and longs to walk with him.
[18:01] Now, go that way. Wholeheartedly go that way. So let me ask you this morning, let me ask myself, does this describe us?
[18:15] Is this how we're living? You know, does the use of my time, does the way that I spend my money, do the dreams of my heart, the aspirations of my ambitions, are they marked by this wholehearted desire to follow the Lord?
[18:31] Or is the truth is that I've slightly lost my way? I'm wandering aimlessly. I think, though, it's a mistake, isn't it, if we see this just as a challenge?
[18:42] Because I think there's a consolation in this, too, isn't there? You see, there are some of us in this room who have been Christians for a really, really long time. Some of you, and I'm not going to look in any particular direction, because I know you'll be offended at me saying this, but some of you, I'm just going to look to a blank page of the balcony, some of you are in the final laps, aren't you, of the Christian life?
[19:04] And maybe for you, as you look back, what sticks most clearly in your mind are the Uriah and Bathsheba moments of your life. Not your wholeheartedness.
[19:16] Perhaps you see the disappointments where you've missed the point, where you've been waylaid along the way, where you took the wrong turn at High Park Corner. Maybe, as you look back, you see wasted years in pointless pursuits.
[19:34] Well, let me say this morning, if you're a Christian, if you believe and trust in the Lord Jesus, and you long to live for him, and you're in the final laps of that race, you can sing David's song.
[19:45] Because the fact that you're here, and you want to live for him, and you want to live for his glory, is a sign of this wholehearted work that God has done in you.
[19:56] You can sing that your godliness was not a destination along the way, it's not a merit sticker that you received when you obtained a certain standard. No, godliness is this commitment to keep going, and keep walking, to keep trusting, to keep looking to Christ, to keep looking to please him, until you see him face to face.
[20:13] And if that's you this morning, and maybe especially if you're in these final laps, let me say to you that we will, if we're still here, which we might not be, but if we're still here and the Lord has spared us, with tear-filled rejoicing, we will stand around your grave and sing that they finished the race.
[20:35] They completed the task that God had given them. They wholeheartedly walked with him, and now they're with him. And there's no greater joy. There's no greater joy.
[20:46] So that's the centre of the song, this wholehearted, this blamelessness of David, as he desires to follow the Lord. But let me just try and tease out what goes on at the beginning and the end, and see some more of its implications for us.
[21:02] So let's start with the first bit, the personal rescue for the blameless. Look down at these opening sections, and you can't help but notice how many times David says, my, I'm not going to count them, I think it's nine, but I could be wrong.
[21:14] In verses two to three, he talks about God's personal saving and shielding. God is not distant or far off to David, but is nearby and present. Belonging to David is a rock, a fortress, a deliverer, a shield, a stronghold, a refuge, and a saviour.
[21:29] Now, the strength of David's praise here, in a sense, is linked to the depth of his trouble. As he's been in trouble, in verses five to seven, as he's been in deep water, that he knows God's rescue.
[21:42] And it's probably a reference to the trouble Saul caused him when he came so close to death. And we've read enough of 2 Samuel to know that there have been a number of occasions in David's life when it has been really precarious for him.
[21:55] And yet, he says, he sings, God has always saved me. He's always turned up and rescued me. So in verse seven, David cries out. In verse eight, God is angry.
[22:06] And in verse 10, comes down in dark clouds, to save him. You might think, what is David referring to here? What is the language here? This thunder and lightning. It's clearly a kind of apocalyptic type language, isn't it?
[22:19] It's poetry that he is writing. He's using pictures to convey God's power as he's come to rescue him. Actually though, as he uses those pictures and you relate it to the times in his life, it's actually been quite ordinary.
[22:33] You know, you think about the time when Saul came into the cave where David is hiding. Saul has been hunting David to try and kill him. And Saul accidentally walks into the cave where David is at the, hidden at the back of the cave.
[22:46] Saul comes in to use the toilet. Right? And David is saved by Saul wandering into the wrong cave. And David says, as he sings, with those kind of things in mind, he goes, God came down to save me in thunder and lightning.
[23:04] And these apocalyptic pictures are not exaggerations, are they? Rather what David is using is he's using covenant images. He's recalling Exodus 19 and the people of Israel in front of Mount Sinai where there's thunder and lightning and crashing and light.
[23:18] And God is speaking to them, saying that you are my people. You belong to me. I'm rescuing you. You belong to me to live for me. And David says, you know, those covenant promises, those belong to me.
[23:31] I've experienced them. I've seen them working out. God has saved me. So perhaps this morning you find yourself in something that might feel a little bit like verses five to seven.
[23:43] You know what it feels like to be encompassed by death, to be drowning in the ways of destruction, of the sin of our own hearts, perhaps. Well, if that's you, let me encourage you to cry to God right there.
[23:57] He will meet you there. He will come wholeheartedly to save you. He will rescue. God has got a covenant promise, a promise that David sees echoed in Exodus 19.
[24:10] He sees echoed in what God has promised to him. It's fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the one who literally ripped open the heavens and burst into our world, who bolted forth from the brightness of the presence of God and still promises to save and rescue for eternity with him.
[24:26] I wonder, though, if I can ask you, how do you expect to encounter those promises today? Well, let me suggest to you that just like David encountered these great things of God in the ordinariness of a cave with Saul, so you and I encounter the extraordinariness of God's covenant promises in the ordinary means of things like a church gathering, a time around the Lord's table, singing the words of a song, the prayer of a Christian brother or sister.
[24:58] In those moments, the Lord comes thundering down to help us, to keep us walking blamelessly home. Perhaps this morning you're not a Christian or maybe you're just not quite sure exactly where you stand with the Lord.
[25:10] Perhaps you say, well, if all of this is true, I would expect to see it written in the sky as I walk out of here or I'd expect to have an audible voice come to me as I lie on my bed at night, a thunderbolt from the sky stopping me in my tracks.
[25:27] Well, obviously, God could do that and God has done those things on occasion but David's song here is to remind you that actually more often than not, God's salvation comes and is seen in ordinary ways.
[25:42] Let me suggest to you this morning that actually the extraordinary work of God you see in the ordinary cry of a baby in a manger in Bethlehem. You see in the bloodstained body of a man on a cross and now you see it in a small church in northwest London preaching a message, breaking bread together and celebrating his life and death.
[26:08] Here God is at work. He's working to save and to rescue, to keep and to lead his people. Here in this place God is walking with his people through the snares of death, the days of disaster to bring them safely home.
[26:23] There's a story told of a man who's praying that the Lord would get him across a river. He's earnest in his prayers, he's there on his knees, he's asking, you know, Lord get me to the other side of this river, get me to the other side of this river.
[26:35] Eventually a small boat comes along and says, listen I'll give you a ride to the other side of the river. He says, no, no, no, don't worry, I'm praying, God's going to do it for me, God will do it for me. Along comes a kid on a paddle board, I'll take you across the river, he says.
[26:48] No, no, don't worry, I'm praying, God's going to do it for me, God will do it. Guy comes in a canoe, I'll take you across. No, don't worry, God's going to do it for me, he says.
[26:59] I'm waiting for the Lord to answer, but the answer never comes and dejected and sad he walks home concluding God's not there when he meets the Lord and he's asked why did he give up his faith?
[27:10] He says, you never answered my prayer to get me across the river. God says, I answered it three times and he didn't take any of them. And that's the thing, isn't it? Actually, God is at work in ordinary ways, doing extraordinary things in our lives.
[27:24] And David encourages us to see that. You know, perhaps it is if you're not a Christian this morning, that preacher that you walk past on the street actually is giving out eternal treasure. You just never stop to listen.
[27:40] Let's finish as we come to the end of the song, final victory for a blameless king. Final victory for a blameless king. There's a lot more in these verses than we're going to have time to tease out.
[27:51] But I want you just to notice with me as we close that the emphasis at the end of the song is not so much on David's personal salvation, but on his role as God's king in conquering the nations. Look at verse 35.
[28:02] David has hands that are trained for war. He's pursued his enemies and destroyed them in verse 38. In verse 40, he's been equipped with strength for battle so that he delivers God's people as the head of the nations in verse 44.
[28:16] In verse 45, foreigners come cowering to him whose alternative strongholds have let them down in verse 46. Verse 51 sort of wraps the whole theme together where he says he gives his king great victories.
[28:30] He shows unfailing kindness to his anointed, to David and his descendants forever. Now, here we've moved, haven't we, from the personal salvation that David was singing about in the first third of the song.
[28:44] Now we find that he's the leader of the army of God's people. He is the king of God's kingdom. And the point is that David's blamelessness has not only been good news for him as he's received personal salvation from the Lord, it's been good news for everybody in the kingdom.
[28:59] His point is that really, if you like, his blamelessness has been a funnel of blessing to the kingdom of God's people. It's because I've walked with the Lord that God has saved our armies and has rescued us as a people.
[29:12] Now, of course, at this point we find, don't we, that we're no longer David, are we, in the story? Like we've been finding over and over in 2 Samuel, David is the king of God's people is pointing forward to the Lord Jesus.
[29:26] Jesus is God's final king, the king of God's people who are no longer a nation but a church of many nations. And the king is not just a man but it's the God-man, Christ Jesus.
[29:37] And here we see David as a forerunner of the Lord Jesus as Jesus picks up these metaphors of kingdom and king and nation of battle and fulfills them in his ministry.
[29:49] Leading his church not into a battle with flesh and blood for nations or states but in a battle with the spiritual forces of the heavenly places for the souls of men and women. A battle in which Jesus is just as comprehensively victorious as David is.
[30:02] Strengthened by the spirit, victorious on the cross, risen from the grave, ascended into heaven, seated at the right hand of the father watching all his enemies being put beneath his feet the last of which is death itself.
[30:16] It's obvious here, isn't it? Jesus is the one in verse 48 whom the father has put over the nations. He's put everything under his feet. Jesus is the one who in verse 45 who the nations come and bow to as he gathers people from across the globe to follow him and obey him.
[30:31] Christ is the returning king, the one who will have the final victory, who will crush completely in verse 39, who will beat the devil to dust and consign him to hell in verse 43.
[30:44] And just like David's victories have been funneled to his people through his blamelessness, so Jesus' victories are funneled to us through his blamelessness.
[30:54] Jesus, who faultlessly and wholeheartedly trusts in his father and obeys his plan. Jesus, who never takes a false turn, never trips up, never stops, single-mindedly, wholeheartedly, devoted to his father, channeling the blessings of victory to his people.
[31:17] You know, think about it like this, that the joy of being an Israelite in David's kingdom is because you knew David was following the Lord. God was on his side. Everything would be okay for him and his kingdom.
[31:29] And that's it with Jesus. Jesus is our blameless king who wholeheartedly follows his father. And so you and I know everything will be okay because my king is blameless and following the plan of the father.
[31:46] God is on his side. We are in his church. You know, the story of the Bible is that God's king wins. Jesus wins. Blameless Jesus wins because God is with him.
[31:58] And so if you're trusting in him this morning, then the truth is you and I will win too. There will be a day when every tear will be wiped away, every cancer will be healed, every panic attack will be soothed, every exam will be smashed, every job will be a joy, every relationship will be a delight, every problem will be solved, every money worry will be gone, every angry outburst will be dissolved, every addiction will be cracked.
[32:24] Why? Because the son, by the power of the spirit in the plan of the father, blamelessly obeyed and so everything will be under his feet.
[32:36] And until that day, we follow him, wholeheartedly walking towards him, losing our lives in joyful praise of his greatness. Let me pray and then we'll respond and so on.
[32:49] Heavenly Father, we want to thank you for the Lord Jesus.
[33:10] We thank you that the blessings of a future kingdom where it will be our joy and our bliss for all eternity to be with you.
[33:21] Come to us through his wholehearted obedience. And Lord, we want to pray that you would make us more like Jesus. That like David, like Jesus, we would wholeheartedly follow you, trusting in you, obeying you.
[33:40] Please, we pray, recognizing maybe for some of us this morning, we've just gotten waylaid. We've wandered off, got distracted. Bring us back, we pray.
[33:51] Keep us going. We pray that it would be our joy and our delight to be able to say that we have run the race. We've completed the task that you have given us.
[34:03] All glory to your name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.