About this sermon
A Morning Instruction class on the Mosaic covenant, beginning with Exodus 20. The covenant at Sinai follows the pattern of ancient treaties: a preamble, a history of what the great king has done, stipulations, witnesses, and blessings and curses. Grace comes first, for the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt before giving the law. The sacrifices at the center of the covenant showed that Israel could not be saved by its works and pointed ahead to Christ, who fulfills the law for his people.
Sermon transcript
All right, looks like we’re moving now. All right, now, we have for this quarter, we’re going through for new people, O. Palmer Robertson, he wrote a book called The Christ of the Covenants. In past weeks, we have been working through this basically just a chapter a week. In this, we have talked about covenant theology. Covenant theology is something that’s not very popular in our day. When people talk about covenant theology, they don’t think of it in a good way. It’s very sad.
Because at this church, many people here, we would be glad to say that covenant is the structure of God’s word. It’s the way that God gives us his word. The whole Bible, we would say, is a group of covenants, a group of agreements, where God comes and imposes his will upon people, and he asks them to do certain things, he makes them do certain things. We’ve studied the Adamic covenant, God made a covenant with Adam. We studied the Noahic covenant, covenants that were made with Noah. We’ve been also studying Abraham and that covenant. But God’s providence brings us to the covenant of Moses or the Mosaic covenant. Just to get us started here, I might just read the beginning of Exodus 20, where we have the beginning of the Mosaic Covenant. Exodus 20, familiar to many of you, I’m sure.
Just the first couple of verses, then God spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol. or any likeness of what is in earth, what is in heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing loving kindness to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. And on it goes to explain the Sabbath day, and then it gets into the second portion of what’s called the Decalogue, or the Ten Commandments, the Ten Words. Those are those that have to do with man. So the first portion has to do with God, four commandments, and then four having to do with man.
Now, first thing that we want to ask is this. Two things, a couple things are going on. We have covenant. We have covenant and we have law. Two separate things. Now, there are some people who would want to say that Law is the basis of what Moses does. That is the high point. We would say that law, in one sense, replaces covenant, or law is what it is all about. But we would want to disagree with that. Opalmer Robertson disagrees with that fully. This is how he does so.
First of all, we would want to say that Israel was already in covenant before Moses comes. Remember that Abraham comes before Moses. So the Hebrews, the Israelites, the sons of Abraham, they’re already in covenant. It’s not as if the time of Moses comes and it just washes away everything that comes before that.
Now, what happens with this, with this Mosaic covenant, is an addition that doesn’t take away, doesn’t subtract, does not supplant, does not replace the covenantal aspect. Why is it that we ought to understand that these two are not They’re not equal. They’re not equal. We would not say that law cancels out covenant, not at all.
Why is it that we would say that? Well, first of all, what did we just read? We read Exodus 20. God spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. What comes first, law or grace? Even in Moses, even in a covenant that has a very strong law aspect to it, which comes first in the passage that we just read?
Yes, John. Grace. Is that what you’re going to say, John? Okay. Very good. Also, if I volunteer, someone could read Exodus 2, 24. Maybe John Doyle. Exodus 2, verse 24. God heard their running, and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. Thank you. Exodus 2, we know what happens there.
We’ve just seen the passing away of one pharaoh and the introduction of a second pharaoh, the passing away of a pharaoh who liked. the Hebrew people, and then coming to the fore of a pharaoh who did not like them so much, and he begins to oppress them. And what does God say?
He says, He hears the cries of the oppressed. He hears the groaning of His people. Was this because of law? No. God understands that He’s in covenant with these people. He is watching over them. He’s taking care of them. in this time. He is going to, by His grace, rescue them.
What we would say then, is that in one sense, this Mosaic Covenant, it is about renewal. It’s about a renewal of the people. And it’s not, that’s not all it’s about. Certain distinctions are going to come out at this time. What is distinct about the Mosaic Covenant? If there is a relation of unity between all the covenants, and there is, ultimately we believe all the covenants, all the agreements, all of the statutes that God imposes upon his people, all of them point to Christ. That is how we would say that there’s a unity to them. But there are differences, one from another.
Let’s just say this, the patriarchs, the people who preceded, we just read about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they had an understanding of God’s will, because God would reveal himself to them. He comes to Abraham a few times, he comes to Isaac, he comes to Jacob a couple of times, and certain dreams happen between these three meetings with God. God reveals his will, but it was much more rare for it to happen, even in the lives of them. Let’s not think that as we read the Bible that every day of the life of people who are in the Bible was just full of supernatural things, miracles, dreams, and all kinds of things. It was very rare in their lives as well. But the patriarchs, those original three and people who came before, they didn’t have a declared will of God for all of life.
We would say then that the Mosaic Covenant is an external summation of the will of God. That’s what is different about this covenant, different than all the others. writes down his will for the people. He writes it on stones. And also, Moses, we believe, is writing at this time. We believe that somewhere along the 40 years of wandering in the desert, Moses is writing this. That’s one portion that I didn’t talk about, but he makes a really strong defense for mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. We believe the first five books were written.
The Mosaic Covenant then, we should see, is different than all the others because it’s the writing of God’s will so that they can constantly refer to it rather than God just having explained a dream or come to one and said, in a certain amount of time, your barren wife is going to have a son. Those things are true, but they don’t have an ongoing character of what God would have his saints do.
Yes? While you’re on the subject of, you say, Moses’ writing and those verses written by Moses, what do you know about Richard Simone and some of the people like him who claim that Moses couldn’t possibly have written all of the Ten Commandments, but let’s tell them Moses did. And there are other arguments that Moses, he may have written some of it, but it’s probably written by other authors. Certainly.
Well, I don’t know about Richard Simone. I must say, I must confess, I don’t have all of liberal scholarship. There are so many people who would say the same exact thing. In fact, that’s so taken for granted. I don’t know anything about him, but what he says is very common. What I would say is this, a couple of things.
One, we see multiple parts of the first five books where God is saying, write this down. And so it is being passed down. We would also see that there is, it’s constantly being referred to in other parts of the Old Testament. Also, this we ought to see concerning Mosaic authorship is that Who does Jesus say wrote the first five books of the Pentateuch?
Moses. Jesus just takes that for granted. Now, I don’t know about you, I’m sure, but I would gather that for most of you in here, you’d think, well, if Jesus thinks it’s Moses, that’s good enough for me. Now Jesus was on the road to Emmaus with two people. And what does he do? He gives probably the greatest Bible study that’s ever been given. And he shows how all the scriptures point to him. The writings of Moses, the Psalms, and the rest of the writings, they all point to him.
Jesus talks about the issue of divorce from your wife when the Pharisees come to him and say, well, Moses said that we could just give a certificate of divorce. And Jesus doesn’t say, well, let me just explain to you, Moses didn’t write that. He just takes it for granted. We certainly would understand that maybe not every single word, maybe it was the case that Joshua wrote the last chapter because he was dead.
We’d be open to that. We wouldn’t be opposed to that kind of an issue to say, yeah. He may have, there may have been some, what they call redaction, some putting it into its final form. But I don’t think we need to believe in any major editing at all. Also, let me just say really briefly, I was gonna skip it, but I’m glad to go there about the Mosaic authorship. Maybe I should just, should not have skipped it, Let me just mention what Robertson says.
He talks about Hittite law treaty. Hittite law treaty. Let me just say this. People who would believe what you’re talking about, they would want to say that there’s a very late date for the writing of Moses. They would want to say that at the earliest, Ezra and Nehemiah did it. Right? This is hundreds of years later. Or some people would even say that the whole Old Testament was written after the time we believe that it was.
Maybe after the time that we believe Malachi was around. Well, there’s a scholar, brilliant scholar, his name was Meredith Klein. And there’s one person here who used to sit in his class, Mr. Brandeberry. But Meredith Klein does something very interesting.
He says this. He compares the book of Deuteronomy to Hittite law treaties. Listen to the structure of a Hittite law treaty, just briefly. This is how it would be structured. It would first have a preamble. It would have a preamble, a declaration of lordship of the conquering suzerain or of the subject. A preamble first, then an historical prologue emphasizing acts of benevolence. Then an extensive delimiting of stipulations involving both demands for heart loyalty and requirements for specific action.
Fourth, it would have provisions for the official depositing of duplicate copies of the treaty documents in the presence of the respective gods of vassal and suzerain. Fifth, an invocation of witnesses, often involving the summoning of inanimate objects, and sixth, a statement of potential curses and blessings related to covenant fidelity. Just those six, I don’t wanna say, those six things there, those six significant pieces of a Hittite law, this would be 1,400 BC to 1200 BC. This is when the Hittites were writing up these kinds of treaties.
Does that sound familiar? A preamble, a historical prologue, an extensive delimiting of stipulations, provisions, invocation of witnesses. Often those witnesses are inanimate objects. Does that sound familiar to anyone other than Mr. Brandenburg? Yes. I bet he was. On Deuteronomy. Preaching through Deuteronomy. Yes. This is good. Pastor Dan, do you believe that The Deuteronomy presents for us something similar to a Hittite-Suzerain law treaty. Very good.
Now, what’s interesting about this is that We can always take the easy answer, right? And say, this is what people in a liberal college or university, the kinds of people that Meredith Klein went to seminary with when he was working on his PhD at what was called Dropsy College at the time. It’s now the University of Pennsylvania Biblical Studies Department. We can always do the easy thing, and there’s nothing wrong with it, and say, well, Jesus says Moses wrote it. Good enough. But the thing is, it’s helpful also for us to take the non-believing theologian or philosopher and say, that’s fine, we’ll take you at your own game and we’ll show you that actually, this is much older than you give it credit for.
As far as I’ve heard, nobody’s ever given a refutation of this, of what Meredith Klein has written. Meredith Klein is a very fascinating author, difficult to read, But there’s a reward in it, even if you disagree with him. I disagree with about seven things he says, but fantastic author. Anyways, so it’s kind of like a two-edged sword though, right?
You can say, well let’s just see what the Word of God says. And the word of God assumes that Moses wrote it. Or we can say, let’s see what general revelation says. Let’s see what archeology does say. And in this case, archeology very much points not to a late date for Moses’ writings, it points to a much earlier date.
And we have to be thankful for men who are so brilliant, men like Meredith Klein. I’m told that he could just read, he could just sight-read his Hebrew upside, downside, backwards, forwards, just pull it out. Now, I’m working on that. I’m not there yet. Even handy languages like you can read. Yes.
But don’t we still have to be careful when we’re dealing with extra-biblical material that we not cross the line into understanding that it is the spirit’s witness in our hearts that tells us that it is indeed the word of God, ultimately, not even. Moses’ authorship is important to us because of his own self It attests itself to be, the Bible says, it is written by Moses. And we want to believe that because the Spirit says that in our hearts. And that no matter how much we might argue with liberals, but also one of the first, in the first class that I had with Dr. Klein, he made an important distinction that what it was important to interpret the scripture and not to argue liberals. And that there are other people who are well-equipped to do that, and they are called apologists. And depending on what our task is and what God calls us to do, and I think that it’s important for us to remember to keep in mind that the scriptures tell us that this is Moses, or Paul, This is this is very good and thank you for for mentioning that and We should I I should clarify this that our Belief in mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is not based on This ultimately this is helpful It might help our faith even more, but we don’t depend on this. You’re right, we depend upon the Holy Spirit testifying to this in our hearts as we read the Word, as we hear it read, as we hear it preached from.
He testifies that this is the Word of God. These things are helpful, but not ultimately what we want to state our faith on. And this is why. This is very clear evidence of ancient authorship of Moses.
There are times when evidence doesn’t seem to look the way we would expect it to, right? Sometimes the evidence appears to point in the opposite direction from the truth, from the way things actually happen. Anyone who would Sid in jury duty knows that sometimes things can look like they can go both ways.
There was a time when the city of Nineveh was nowhere to be found archaeologically. And so liberals would read Jonah and they’d say, it’s a fake story. It’s about a man who’s eaten by a fish. Not only that, it’s a fake city. Well, Imagine all the Christians who heard that and what are they supposed to, if the evidence goes our way this time, what if for a time the evidence doesn’t go our way? Are we to say, well maybe God’s not true? No, God is true and sometimes later evidence might help to explain these things and help to reveal this because eventually one day they ran into the city of Nineveh and they began to excavate and excavate and they found that this city was actually very very large and the biblical testimony was borne out. We don’t want to ultimately stake our place and our belief upon external evidences.
It’s really the power of scripture. uh… thank you thank you for that we have about twenty minutes so we should dive a little bit that was that was i think a i hope that was a sanctified rabbit trail i hope that was worthwhile to everyone shame on me for thinking oh they won’t want to talk about that we’ll just get to the good stuff that is good stuff Let’s talk about its authorship done. Okay, let’s talk about the fact that what is it? What is it? There are some people who would want to say, interestingly enough, that the Mosaic Covenant is a covenant of Now, in previous weeks we’ve talked about a covenant of works.
What we believe, I think it’s borne out by Scripture, by the Westminster Confession, by theologians over the last 2,000 years, but especially the last four or five hundred, We would say that from the testimony of Scripture, Adam was under a covenant of works wherein he was tested, and if he had succeeded in his probationary period, he would have brought on the end time.
He would have brought on the eschaton. He would have brought on heaven for himself and for his posterity. we believe that Christ was under a covenant of works. That is to say, the first Adam fails, the second Adam succeeds. And the second Adam earns for himself as incarnate person life, resurrection life, but also for all of us, he earns that. So, first Adam, second Adam. In previous weeks we’ve talked about three separate eras of covenant history.
We’ve talked about Adam, we’ve talked about Christ, and we’ve talked about everything that came in between, which was the covenantal era, excuse me, which was the typological era, that’s the point, those points that point forward to Christ. But the question is, was the nation of Israel under a covenant of works?
O. Palmer Robertson says, no. I think he’s right about that. We ought not to look for connections within God’s word where they may not be. There are many believers, brothers and sisters, covenant theologians in our time, especially those of a particular seminary way out west, who would very much say that Moses and the nation was under a covenant of works. Just a couple thoughts on that, though.
What would be good arguments against it not being so? Well, first of all, we don’t believe that if the nation, as a covenantal nation, if they had obeyed God’s law, that they would have earned anything. They didn’t earn anything. They couldn’t have earned anything, because they were sinners. Also, we ought to see it as a covenant of grace, not of works or a separate economy or a separate manifestation of a covenant of grace.
Why? Because it starts off with grace. It starts off with, as we read before, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Now, also we could think about this. What was one of the major factors in the covenant of Moses, or the Mosaic covenant? Think Leviticus. Think of death. Sacrifices. Why were sacrifices such a central part of the Mosaic covenant? Because it wasn’t about their works, go ahead. Yes, the gospel was there at the time of Moses. The gospel’s been there throughout all of redemptive history. we would say that they were sinners, and they had typological, that is, pictures of what was to come, all of these sacrifices.
Go back to the time of Luke 24, when the two people are on the road to Emmaus, Jesus is going through Moses, and the prophets, and the Psalms, and he’s saying, this is me, this is me, and this is me, and that’s me, and that’s me. Well, where was he doing that? Well, surely he must have been reminding them of Leviticus and saying, all these sacrifices, those point to me. Look, the lamb brought to the slaughter, that’s me. The temple, the tabernacle, all these things point to me. And he was filling those out. We try to do just a portion of that in each sermon in the Old Testament when we are expounding what he must have been pointing to. But there he was explaining it all to them, not exhaustively, but what a Bible study that must have been.
All these sacrifices would have to show that it could not have been a covenant of life, which a covenant of works is really a covenant of life. There was no life to be found in that age, in that time. Not the earning of life, like we would expect in a covenant of works.
What I’m comfortable with, though, if we were going to say anything, some people would want to say that there is a recapitulation of Adam’s failure. That might actually work. If you read Isaiah 24, very interestingly, the people are talking about the fact that they are under a covenant of death. Covenant of death. I think there might be something to that in the sense that this is not a covenant of works, it’s a covenant of death, what? That shows the people God’s will and shows their sinfulness, as we talked about just a little bit ago. It is a showing the death that comes by disobedience to God.
If anything, we might say it’s just that. As Paul asks, someone asks, Paul, I think it’s in Galatians, why was the law added? He’s talking about Abraham and Moses. Why was the law added? He says, it was added because of transgressions. It was added to show how sinful we are because we need to see how sinful we are and this is given to us by Moses so that we can understand Christ. So, we also should see this. Law is not, Moses is not the first time that law comes about as central. There were aspects of law in the previous administrations.
Adam was to obey God and he was to work by the sweat of his brow. Noah was to build an ark and to put to death in a murderous, Genesis 9, 6. Abraham was to leave home. He was to circumcise his household. Moses also suffers punishment for not fulfilling the Abrahamic circumcision. the Abrahamic covenant by circumcision, I should say. Everyone remember that time when Moses is there with his wife and God is going to snuff him out, why? Because he had not circumcised his child. And so Zipporah quickly grabs a knife, circumcises their child.
He had not even fulfilled the law. The law was there before that time. And the law also would be after that time. So it’s not the first time law comes about, but it is the first time that it is written down for us. But the thing is, the thing that we ought to understand is Moses and the Mosaic Covenant was not something that was complete in itself. It’s not a high point in God’s revelation. It’s a building, building upon previous understandings, but it still leaves something to be desired.
Why does it do that? Well, because it’s written on stones. It’s written on stones. The thing about stones is they are, they last a long time, but they are impersonal. But what was lacking was that we needed the law of God placed in our hearts. We need it inside of us. We need to internalize it. Are we under the Mosaic Law? No. Anyone else? No, in a sense. But yes, in a sense. We could say. We should kind of flesh this out. In a sense we are not, in a sense we are. Let’s just look at a couple of passages first, at other covenantal administrations first.
Would you get Romans 16.20, just one verse, Kathy, just one verse, Romans 16.20, and would you be willing to read 2 Peter 3? 5 through 7? Each one of these are just gonna be two or three verses. And Margaret, would you like to read? This would be Romans 4, 16 and 17. And then, anyone else? Would you like to read, Mark? Romans 15, 12. Okay, first, let’s hear, are we under the Adamic covenant in any sense? Go ahead, just your one verse, please. 1620, Romans.
Okay, interesting that Here, Paul is writing, many, many years after this, he’s writing about, he’s just inferring something, he’s referring to the covenant made with Adam, that the seed of the woman is going to crush the seed of the serpent. It seems to be, according to Robertson, it seems to be plausible. We’re, in a sense, under the Adamic administration, or that covenant, at least the curse part of it, but also the promise aspects of it, that Christ would crush him. Did you have 2 Peter 3, 5 through 7, please? Are we under, let me just ask this, are we under the Noahic covenant or administration in any way, a common grace understanding. Go ahead.
And did not spare the ancient world that preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the earth, the world would be ungodly. And if he condemned the saints of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter, And if he rescued righteous love, that’s probably good. So what does he have to say about Noah? Just in case you’re not familiar with this passage, Noah was a preacher of righteousness.
He says, water’s coming, judgment is coming, and water does come. And he, Peter, is making the analogy, drawing the similarity between in our time, the time before the judgment day, the time before God is not going to bring judgment by water, but he’s going to bring judgment upon the whole earth by fire. Drawing the analogy between those two things there.
Who do we have for? Romans 4, 16 and 17, but let me ask, are we under the Abrahamic covenant in any way? My life depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring, not only to the adhering of the law, but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. As it is written, I have made you the father of many nations.
In the presence of the God in whom we believe, he gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. Thank you. Sorry, I almost interrupted. Shame on me. So are we under the Abrahamic covenant? In one sense, we are. Why? Because Abraham is our father. Who sang that song? Father Abraham had many sons. I didn’t. I grew up pagan. So I’ll just live by proxy for you. Yes? I want to go back to your original question. Sure. Are we under the Hosea law? Matthew 19. 1916, yes. Now man came up to Jesus and asked the teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life? Jesus said, why do you ask me about what is good? He replied, there’s only one who is good. If you want, enter. If you like, obey. Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony. Honor your father and mother and love your neighbor as yourself. All these I have kept, the young man said, what do I still lack?
Well, it looks like. Yes in in one sense that’s that’s you’re you’re you’re kind of seeing where I’m going where in the sense we would say yes Very good. There is a sense in which we are under it, that is to say, the law still shows us our sin. It’s still written on cold hard stones that show us our wickedness. We’re not under it, and this is what Paul says a number of times, and I had a number of places I probably over-prepared, but we’re skipping a lot, that is to say. But who knows that the Bible says we’re not under law but under grace. We know that, which we would say, we’re not under the civil laws of the Old Testament, those governmental laws. We’re not under the ceremonial laws. We’re not under those.
But we still have the Ten Commandments that show us our sin. And ultimately, that passage that Kathy brings up, that was pointing to Jesus, because he’s the only one who could actually say he had kept those. Well, we have three minutes and we’re going to have to go really fast here. Let me just ask this. Are we under the Davidic covenant, Romans 15, 12th? Are you ready for that, Mark? Yes. Thank you. So do you hear that?
He’s quoting Isaiah chapter 11, where there’s basically a dead stump. But a shoot is going to come out of this dead stump, and it’s the root of Jesse. And that root of Jesse is Christ. And Christ rules over the Hebrew people alone, right? No. He rules over the Gentiles. He rules over the nations, he says.
Let me, as we have two minutes, we should look at 2 Corinthians 7. Excuse me, 2 Corinthians 3. And we’re gonna go really fast here. What did they say in Spaceballs? We’re going to go ludicrous speed. Thank you. We’re going to go ludicrous speed. We want to see that though Moses was sufficient for the time, it was inadequate to be staying. to be continuing. Let’s look first at the glowing face of Moses.
2 Corinthians 3.10.
For indeed what had glory in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it. You hear that? The Mosaic Covenant was beautiful, it was wonderful, it was great, it was glorious. But, in compared with the administration which we’re under, that is, the time of the Spirit, where the Spirit comes into our hearts, Jeremiah 31, when we compare the two, though that had glory on its own, this, the time in which we are in, outshines it. it so outshines it that it almost seems like the Mosaic Covenant has no glory at all. It does have it, but not when compared with it. So, Moses’ glory. Then we look at the fading glory compared with the permanent glory.
2 Corinthians 3.7. Fading versus permanent.
But if the ministry of death in letters engraved on stones came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face shining as it was. So there it was, a ministry of death. And the shining face of Moses is fading. compared with 13, and are not like Moses who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away. Paul is saying that even for Moses, his face was shining, it was beaming brightly, but it was a face that was fading away, the beaming nature of it, illuminating, glorious nature of it was passing away even at that time. So how much more after the ministry of the Spirit has come? And then just about the veiling of the face. Well, we probably should stop there. Let me just end with this.
Every aspect of God’s revelation expands and expands. And each time is sufficient for its time, but it grows and grows. It is like a seed that is growing and growing like a tree. All of the aspects of the gospel are there in the seed form at Moses, excuse me, at Adam.
How much more so as we have the external covenant that tells us God’s law and tells us his will. As sufficient as it was for the time, it is not sufficient for our time because we live in a time that surpasses that and supersedes that. We still have the law to point to our sin, but how much greater we have Christ that points to the grace that we have in Him, the forgiveness of sins.
Well, we are over time, so let me pray very quickly. And then we will have about 18 minutes to prepare for worship. Let’s do so. Our Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for the ministry of the Spirit, so much greater than the ministry of stones, the ministry of death, the covenant of death. We ask that you would help us to understand, help us to see that this morning through the read and the preached words. We ask that you would use this time for our grace, Grace to us, but glory to you and glory to Jesus. In his name we pray, amen.
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