Isaiah 11
reading tonight will be Isaiah
chapter 11. And because you’re allowed to change your mind once
or twice, we’re also going to read verses one through six of
chapter 12. So the response of God’s goodness
comes in the form of two little songs. in chapter 12, one through
six. And I’m not sure yet, but we
may look at one through six next week in more detail, because
I really only sort of barely mentioned it tonight. So just
a little refresher, Isaiah is a prophet before, during and
after exile. He’s speaking primarily to the
Southern kingdom, but he also yells at the Northern kingdom. What fusses it? Egypt, Assyria,
Babylon, others. But this message is particularly
to King Ahaz, who would be the last king of Israel. In 586,
his reign end when he and the Israelites, or the southern kingdom
of Judah, were destroyed and hauled off into Babylon. And
what God has been saying to Ahaz and to his people is, hey, last
chance, last chance, last chance. Look how others have gotten it,
so to speak. of the scared straight program
and they’re so stiff necked they just don’t get it they don’t
hear it but there’s always a promise with judgment of a remnant returning
and tonight we have a promise of not only a remnant returning
but we have a promise of a of a new king a better king we have
a promise of a restoration of Eden and we have a promise of
a greater Exodus. And so as you follow along, as
we read through Isaiah 11, think about the major themes of the
scriptures and how they pop up in chapter 11 in the beginning.
Well, I guess it’s all of chapter 12 if it’s only the six verses. Yep, that’s right. So just think
of the major themes of the Bible, creation, fall, and redemption,
exile, but also return from exile, Exodus, those kinds of things.
So hear the word of the living God. This is Isaiah chapter 11,
beginning at verse one. There shall come forth a shoot
from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall
bear fruit. And the spirit of the Lord shall
rest upon him, and the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the
fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be in the fear of Yahweh. He shall not judge by what his
eyes see or decide disputes by what his ears hear. But with
righteousness, he shall judge the poor and decide with equity
for the meek of the earth. And he shall strike the earth
with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips,
he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt
of his waist and faithfulness, the belt of his loins. The wolf
shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with
the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened
calf together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and
the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and
the lion shall eat straw like the ox, the nursing child shall
play over the whole of the cobra and the weaned child shall put
his hand in the adders den. They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain for the earth shall be full of the knowledge
of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. In that day, the root
of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples, of
him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be
glorious. In that day, the Lord will extend
his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that remains
of his people from Assyria, from Egypt, and from Pathros, and
from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the
coastlands of the sea. He will raise a signal for the
nations and will assemble the banished of Israel and gather
the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The
jealousy of Ephraim shall depart, and those who harass Judah shall
be cut off. Ephraim shall not be jealous
of Judah, and Judah shall not harass Ephraim. But they shall
swoop down on the shoulder of the Philistines in the west,
and together they shall plunder the people of the east. They
shall put out their hand against Edom and Moab, and the Ammonites
shall obey them. And the Lord will utterly destroy
the tongue of the sea of Egypt and will wave his hand over the
river with his ascending or scorching breath and strike it into seven
channels. And he will lead people across
in sandals. And there will be a highway from
Assyria for the remnant that remains of his people as there
was for Israel when they came up out of the land of Egypt.
You will say in that day, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for
though you were angry with me, your anger turned away that you
might comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation.
I will trust and I will not be afraid. For the Lord God is my
strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. With
joy, you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you
will say in that day, give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name,
make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim his name, that
his name is exalted. Sing praises to the Lord, for
he has done gloriously. Let this be made known in all
the earth. Shout and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for
great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. Amen. The word of the living God for
us. One of the ways that we should
think very often is how God has related to his people throughout
the history of redemption. How he related to Adam and Eve,
how he related to Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and how
he related to Israel through Moses, how he related to David,
the Davidic king or the little M Messiah, and then how God has
related to Jesus Christ. Throughout the scriptures, we
see that God desires one great thing. He desires to gather a
people to himself that he might delight in them and sing for
joy over them, but that they also will delight in serving
and obeying him. We see this great fulfillment
at the end of the book of the end of the Bible in the book
of Revelation. We see there at the very end it says, and now
the dwelling place of God is with men. And God declares, I
will be your God and you will be my people. And then there’s
that wonderful description of the new heavens and the new earth
where the city is perfect and square and beautiful. And there’s
gates and walls and outside are the wicked and inside are the
righteous. And so the people of God live
forever in sweet fellowship with God. Now we know that was ruined
by the fall. Just so happens we read that
tonight in the larger catechism, the effects of the fall. And
you noticed there were temporal aspects of the effects of sin.
You know, we get sick, we hurt, we bang our finger with a hammer,
you know, our relationships struggle. You know, we get sick, we die,
we get our banks robbed, that kind of thing. But there’s also
eternal punishments, such as eternal damnation, the fires
of hell and all that that it mentioned. But also that list
told us what we lost. We lost our righteousness. We
can’t do right anymore. But hopefully you caught the
other big thing we lost. We lost communion with God. And
so how does a God who desires to be with his people How does
he get with them? How does he have fellowship with
them? If they’re centers, if they’re wicked, if they’re unclean,
well, he has to clean them up and he can’t just throw them
in a, in a bath water, you know, squirt a little soap on their
head. He has to clean them from the
inside out. And that can only be done through the sacrifice
of Jesus, uh, with his atoning work on the cross and the cleansing,
the powerful cleansing we receive, uh, when the Holy spirit begins
to work in us. And so, In the Christian life,
you know, we look at the Bible through the lens of our relationship
with God. There’s another big concept we
need to kind of have at the forefront of our minds. There are blessings
of redemption now, and there are blessings of redemption that
are not yet. Maybe you’ve heard the little
phrase in Christ, there’s the already, but also in Christ,
there’s the not yet. And so some of the things that
we experience now are down payments. on redemption. We’ve been born
again from above. We’ve been seated with Christ
in the heavenly places. Uh, we’ve been given the spirit. We’ve been given the scriptures.
We have union with Christ. We have union with his church. Uh, we have preaching and sacraments. Uh, we have blessings of redemption,
down payments, uh, that all point to the, the not yet the full
redemption. And so one day when our spirits
are made perfect in heaven and our bodies are raised up and
united with our spirits from the grave and we enjoy God forever
till all eternity, that’s the not yet. That’s the thing that
is to come that we look forward to. But it’s wonderful, I think,
to experience these down payments on redemption. What does the
scripture say? No eye has seen. what God has
in store for us. We can’t imagine how wonderful
is heaven and the eternal presence of God without sin. And so this
is our firm and our fixed and our final hope. We don’t hope
as in like go to Rego Mart over here and buy a lottery ticket,
you know, and watch the evening news tonight and say, I hope
they call my number. Right? There’s a billion chances
that they’re not going to call your number, right? That’s not
biblical hope. Hope is in something that is
firm and fixed and final. And that’s why God tells us over
and over in the scriptures, this is how it’s going to go. This
is what I’m going to do. You can bank on it. So like the
writer of Hebrews, a little paraphrase, we long for heaven and we look
to Jesus. That’s the way of the Christian life. There’s still
some not yet to come, but we’ve got little bitty down payments.
So tonight, as we think about this message of warning, but
this message of hope to God’s people in the days of old, we
should be full of joy. If you want to be a good evangelist,
Uh, this is good news that we’ll hear tonight. You know, we sort
of poke at sometimes that it’s bad evangelism to say, Hey, you
don’t want to go to hell now, do you? Of course not. Then pray
this prayer. If you prayed the prayer, you’re
going to go to heaven. Here’s your little ticket stub. When the chariot swings
low, just say, Hey, I prayed the prayer, pick me up. That’s
not how it goes. Is it? There’s a little bit more
to coming to faith in Jesus. Uh, that’s a wonderful, good
start, but this will give you a picture. of maybe a more ultimate
destiny for people. Did you know God’s going to make
your body new? Did you know he’s going to put you in a new heavens
and a new earth where you’re not going to stub your toe? You’re
not going to hit your finger with a hammer. Your bank is not
going to get robbed. Your house is not going to get
broken into. Your car is not going to break down. It’s going
to be a perfect life in a perfect world. That will preach on it. Because what does everybody do
as they ride down South Church Street? They’re trying to push
back the effects of the fall. They want hair plugs because
their hair is falling out. They want their teeth whitened
because they’re yellow. They can’t hear, so they get things
put in their ears so they can hear. They can’t see, so they
get corrective lenses. You know, we lust after shiny
things, we ride by the car lot and we, well, we give in. We
want bigger, we want better, we want heaven on earth. That’s what we want. And there’s
so much more that God offers to us. So three ways to think
through this passage. The first is the Messiah. The
second is the new heavens and the new earth. And the third
is the exodus, the new exodus that it’s gonna take to get us
there. So if you look at verses one through five, it speaks about
one coming forth from a shoot out of the stump of Jesse. Uh, maybe, maybe you’ve cut down,
uh, you’ve cut down a tree and, and you think you got it all.
You even had the stump ground and you know, now. I haven’t
mowed my yard in two weeks because the sun’s come out and it’s hot
summer and the grass is not, it’s crunchy now. So around my
crepe myrtles out on the front edge of my lawn, by the street
in front of my house, there’s all these shoots coming out from
the crepe myrtles. Now, do I want a bunch of little
crepe myrtle shoots or just the one big pretty one? You want
the one big pretty one, right? But if you’ve ever cut down a
tree, You’ve ground the stump and you think, oh boy, I’m planting
grass seed and the lawn looks great. Well, what happens? Little
shoots start to come up. And that’s the picture you get
in chapter 11, verses one through five. The king has been cut down
by the Babylonians, 586. Ahaz is no more. Ahaz kingdom
ends, his reign ends because Babylon comes in and is an actor
for God as just punishment for their wickedness and idolatry
and self rule and whatever else they have done for all these
years when God has been so good, gracious and kind to them, he
cuts off Ahaz rule. And so it’s not until the coming
of Jesus, you know, 600 years later, that a king is on the
throne of David. But remember what God promised
to David. He promised that on your throne,
your offspring will reign forever. And he didn’t mean that you’re
just going to have this really long dynasty, whereas David. David, the first
David, the second David, the third, you know, like, you know,
we read about dynasties of the Egyptians and the British and
all that. No, this is the, ultimately the one who will reign on the
throne of David will be a better King, a faithful King. I don’t
want to get into that too much just yet. Actually, actually
I really do. Cause that’s the point. Um, my mind was getting ahead
to the second one. So we got David, um, receiving the promise
from God, your offspring will sit on your throne forever. And
so the little shoot, every time you get in your yard and you’ve
cut down like a Bradford pear, something, one of those terrible
trees everybody planted in the 90s, and the little shoots come up
and you’re aggravated, I don’t want this tree to grow. Just think of the
shoot of David, right? Think of it spiritually. But
what does it say about David? What does it say about him? Why
is it that he will be a better King? Why is it that he will
do what other Kings failed to do? Why is it that he will do
what other Kings could not do? Well, it’s because the spirit
of the Lord shall rest upon him. The dove will come on him at
the inauguration of his ministry. This is my beloved son with whom
I’m well pleased. The spirit of wisdom and understanding
will come on him, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit
of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And here’s what he
will be that other kings couldn’t be. Verse three, his delight
shall be in the fear of the Lord. You know, you read through the
list of kings, you get bogged down in chronicles, right? Gee
whiz. And this king did what was right
in his own eyes and displeased the Lord. And isn’t it kind of
rinse and repeat? I mean, every once in a while,
there’s a Josiah. Every once in a while, there’s someone who
finds the book of the law and repents and gets the kingdom
doing the right thing. But pretty much the Davidic Kings
are a lot like Saul and less like David and Solomon. And so
now you’ve got King Jesus who will come. the, the great Messiah,
the real Messiah, the true Messiah, the capital M Messiah. And he’s
going to be blessed with the power of the Holy spirit. He’s
going to delight in the law of the Lord, but look at what else
he’s going to do. He’s going to be a faithful King. Just earlier
before, before and during prayer time, we talked about, um, how
we have crummy Kings in America, right? I’m not talking about
King George is our present company. We have wicked leaders, wicked
judges. We have wicked, lawmakers, we
have, I mean, it’s, it’s pretty rotten. And that’s what Israel
had. They had Kings that led the nation
into idolatry. They had Kings that ignored the
poor and the widow and the fatherless. And they had Kings that ignored
the laws and the standards of God, but not so this King at
the end of verse three, it says, he shall not judge by what his
eyes see, and he shall not decide disputes by what his ears hear.
But, With righteousness, he shall judge the poor. He shall decide
with equity for the meek of the earth. He shall strike the earth
with the rod of his mouth and the breath of his lips. He shall
kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be his belt
of his waist and faithfulness, the belt of his loins. This is going to be a king in
Jesus. And we’re thinking of his eternal
reign, right? He’s gonna do what others could
not. He’s gonna do what others would not. And I think it’s a good challenge
for us because in some small way, if you think of Adam was
put in the garden to be king over that garden, he was put
in that garden to serve God on earth. And his vocation was to
work the garden, make it productive. His vocation was to keep the
garden or guard it and protect it. And his job was to make through
his offspring, be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. and by his
pursuit of righteousness, which he was perfectly capable of doing.
His job was to spread the glory of God. And if you peek ahead
at chapter 12, uh, where was it? Uh, his glory will cover
the earth as the waters do the sea. I forgot where that verse
is. We’ll come to it at some point, but it’s in at the end
of 11 or 12. And that was the goal of Eden. That was the goal
of Adam. And so there’s this sense where
you need to think of yourselves as little Kings. You need to
see yourselves as ruling over a little piece of the earth. It may be a quarter acre, an
eighth of an acre, but you rule over the yard. You put out fertilizer
and make it grow. You cut it. You put out pine
straw and mulch faithfully. or you pay somebody to do it.
You take care of the house, you insure it, you put a roof on
it when it needs one, those sorts of things. But also you raise
children and grandchildren in the fear of the Lord and you
speak the Bible to other people. And so we ought to take encouragement,
don’t be like Saul. Don’t be like faithless kings
who, when God gave them a spear, they failed to be guardians and
they failed to be guides to the people who were wandering about
in wickedness. We ought to be God-like and Christ-like. Christ-like in the sense that
what Adam failed to do, Christ did not fail to do. And so something
to aspire to, I think. We should live righteous lives.
If we get to judge, we should judge with equity. If we get
to serve, we should serve those who are in hardship. But we should
be God-like to others. So that’s the first thing that
we come up with in this passage in the first five verses, there’s
a better King and that better King is Jesus. He is the one
and true Messiah. But there’s a second picture
that we get a picture of hope and it’s the new Eden. And that
new Eden pops up in verses six through nine. Now I know some
of you are Tolkien people. You read the Lord of the Rings.
You’ve been a couple of you go to the, see the, you know, the,
the marathon trilogy, right? I have a child that reads, he
reads the Lord of the Rings once a year, the whole trilogy, but
he listens to it on audio quite a bit. Or maybe you’re a Narnian. You love C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles. And you remember if you’ve read
or seen or somehow interacted with the Lion, the Witch and
the Wardrobe, that when the children go through the wardrobe, they
go into a winter. a place of winter. And it’s not
a winter wonderland. It’s not, you know, Vail in Colorado
where you can ski and ice skate and wear furry jackets and live
with the rich and dine with the rich. Creation is frozen because it’s
under the spell of the White Witch. And there’s a point where
the children, the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve, begin
to wonder if the spell of the white witch who makes it always
winter and never Christmas. If that spell will ever end.
And that’s the question that we have in the scriptures. We
lamented tonight, the current state of affairs in our nation.
We look around and see the dark culture, the rotting culture.
And we say, will it always be winter and never Christmas? And
the answer is yes, God will make a new heavens and a new earth.
Verses six through nine tell us about the new Eden. And in
the new Eden, the wolf shall dwell with the lamb. Well, don’t
wolves usually eat lambs? Isn’t that kind of the story
of don’t cry wolf, the boy who cried wolf? He was supposed to
be the shepherd and keep the wolves out of the sheep pen.
Okay, so we got predator and prey hanging out together. Then
you got the leopard shall lie down with the young goat. Well,
I assume leopards eat goats. Then you got the calf and the
lion together, the fattened calf. I mean, how do you keep a lion
from eating a fattened calf? If you ever go to the zoo and
you see zoo animals getting fed, they toss the animal or they
toss the food in and the animal snaps it up. And we have a little
black poodle in our house who always seems to come around at
dinnertime. And if you sneak him a morsel, which you really
shouldn’t be doing, he gets it before it’s even out of the hand. And God reverses that. Predator, prey. There is no wild
beast eating meek little lambs. And then it goes on to say, the
cow and the bear shall graze. Their young shall lie down together.
The lion shall eat straw like the ox. Remember back in the
Garden of Eden, there was no meat eating, right? There were
no carnivores. So there’s a picture of what
Eden was like. And then you have the nursing
child playing over the hole of the cobra. At my dad’s house,
under his front steps, Ominous hole. And over the last couple
years out of that ominous hole, I’ve seen a copperhead come out.
And so that snake doesn’t know my the thrill I get with a 12
gauge. But a couple of those snakes
have died. And this year we decided we’re going to keep the snakes
out of that hole. Because the grandkids come over, the granddogs
come over, and we’re not yet in the newly restored Eden, and
so copperheads can wreak havoc on children and pets. So this
year we thought, let’s buy mothballs in bulk, and we’ll pour them
down the hole. We haven’t seen a snake this
year. But in the new heavens and the new earth, the animals,
the wild animals, the deadly animals, mentions here the cobra.
will be with the nursing child. And he’ll put his hand in the
adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy
in all my holy mountain.” A great reference there to Eden and the
mountain where God dwells with his people and he is worshiped.
Remember the little saying, anytime you see the word mountain in
the Bible, that’s a pretty big clue that that’s where God is
worshiped. That’s where God dwells with
his people, where he meets with his people. And so from Eden
to Sinai, to the city of Jerusalem and to the great mountain, that
is the new heavens and the new earth. We see that picture again. Oh, here’s the line I was looking
for. For the whole earth shall be
full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the
sea. In the new Eden, there will be
such a transformation, no more predator, no more prey, but all
will know God and know his salvation. And that knowledge, as Adam should
have done, will now cover the earth as the waters cover the
sea. Well, the third thing that pops
up in this passage is a picture of a new exodus. Now you think
of the first exodus, you know, Israel was in Egypt, they were
multiplying and Pharaoh got upset and said, there’s too many of
them. They’re going to take over. So we’ve got to kill all the baby boys.
Well, Moses was a beautiful child. He got put in the bulrushes.
He was raised by the princess and he became a prince of Egypt,
but he identified later with the sons of God. He went out
into the wilderness where God met him at the burning bush.
God says, you’re going to, you’re going to take my people out of
Egypt and into the promised land. And so Moses is the mediator
of the first Exodus. But fast forward to when Jesus
is on the Mount of Transfiguration and he’s hanging out with Elijah
and Was it Moses and Peter and James and John are there? And
Jesus is speaking of the exodus he is about to go to. He is about to do the work of
bringing people out of sin and misery, out from under the bonds
of Satan and darkness and chains and bring them into an estate
of salvation through his work of redemption. And Jesus is going
to be able to say, come to me, all you who are weary, come to
me and find rest. And so the picture you get in
verses 10 through 16 is everybody’s going to come back from the east. That’s the coastlines. They’re
going to come from the west and north and the south, or as it
says, the four corners of the earth. God is going to make open
the path of salvation for his people. And they’re gonna find
rest from the weariness of sin and death and darkness. They’re
gonna find rest from the weariness of trying to set up heaven on
earth. And we get a little picture of
this when we come to church on Sunday, we get a glimpse of the
rest we find in God, the rest we will enjoy in heaven. We get
a glimpse or a down payment or a taste of heaven. But notice
the Exodus language in verses 10 through 16. I mentioned when
we read this out loud earlier at the beginning to pay attention
to the language. God will raise a signal. He will
lift up a banner and all the people will assemble and they’ll
march. back to Judah, back to the promised
land. Then you’ve got a joining of
Ephraim. Ephraim and Judah won’t be brothers
at each other’s throats anymore, the Northern kingdom and the
Southern kingdom, but the church will unite. There will be no
more denominations, no more fights. Everybody will realize that we
should baptize covenant children, right? Everybody will realize
that, you know, we should all be amillennialist, right? I’m
sort of joking about that, but at least we’ll all see clearly
and agree perfectly. But notice as it goes on in verse
14, it says, they shall swoop down on the shoulder of the Philistines.
Together, they shall plunder the people of the East. They
shall put out their hand against Edom. The Ammonites shall obey. The Lord will utterly destroy
the tongue of the sea. So he’s going to get rid of their
enemies. We can’t fight our enemies off. But God can. Sounds like
the Exodus, doesn’t it? And we can’t walk across a sea
because it’s too great. The Red Sea and then also the
river Jordan into the promised land. God parted them both and
he will pull back the tongue of the sea with his scorching
breath. He will strike it into seven
channels and he’ll lead his people across in sandals. There will
be a highway from Assyria, a remnant that the remains of his people
as there was for Israel when they came up out of the land
of Egypt. There’s, there’s Exodus language here. God is going to
make a way for his redeemed ones to return home to him. Remember
the desire of God is to be with his people and for them to be
with him. And so in his anger, he sends
them away. But what does he do in his mercy? He brings them
back. And that’s the wonderful point
of this new Exodus. The remnant shall return and
they will return under Christ’s banner. And we think of how God
has done that with Israel and with Judah. He’s done that in
Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
And the gospel has advanced and God continues while he tarries
He lets the church proclaim the goodness of God in Christ. Now
I want us to end by thinking of the twofold praise that you
find in verses one through six of, well, it’s all of chapter
12. And there’s two songs here. They both begin, are pointed
out with the refrain, you will say in that day, that’s what
you find in verses one and verse four. And before I look at both
those, just a friendly reminder What do we do when we’re saved?
We sing. And what did Israel do when they
came through the waters of the Red Sea? Miriam and Moses sang
a song, I will sing unto the Lord for he has triumphed. Gloriously,
the horse and rider have been thrown into the sea. That’s in
this little song. What do we sing every Sunday
after our confession of sin and assurance of pardon? We sing
a hymn of redemption. And so look at the words of verses
one to three, I will give thanks to you, O Lord, For though you
were angry with me, your anger has turned away that you might
comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation.
I will trust and not be afraid. For the Lord my God is my strength
and my song. Hey, that kind of sounds like
Exodus 3.14, doesn’t it? Pretty amazing. And he has become
my salvation. And then the second song. Give
thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds
among the peoples. If you’ve been saved, like you’re
cancer free, or maybe you had surgery and your bones aren’t
broken anymore or something like that, don’t you want to tell
everybody, hey, I’m cancer free? You don’t keep that under your
hat, do you? What if you’re saved from eternal damnation and estrangement
from God forever? Wouldn’t you want to tell people?
So he calls people to worship, give thanks to the Lord, call
on his name, make known his deeds among the people, proclaim that
his name is exalted, sing praise to the Lord for he has done gloriously. Hey, there again, it sounds like
Exodus 3. Let this be made known in all
the earth, shout and sing for joy, oh inhabitants of Zion,
for great in your midst is the Holy One. I mentioned just a
moment ago, the little refrain in verses one through four, in
that day, you will say, and I want to end with this challenge. You
live in the day of Christ. the greater Exodus that he accomplished
at the cross. And we are marching to Zion.
We’re in the wilderness. We’re strangers and aliens and
pilgrims. We’re still in exile, but we
will be brought into the promised land where we will be with God
forever and ever. But we know of our salvation.
We’re experiencing the beginnings of it now. So in that day, Which
is now, what will you say? And remember our wonderful little
refrain, what does saved people do? Saved people sing. So let’s give God our thanks
now. Lord, we ask your help and blessing
as we’ve heard your word that we would receive it with Thanksgiving.
We recognize that the remnant has begun to return and we will
one day be with you forever in heaven. We thank you that you,
through your son, have opened the way that we who are far off
that we who were lost and dead in sins and trespasses, we who
were chained in the prisons of Satan have had our eyes opened,
our hearts made new, our shackles have been unlocked, our wrists
are beginning to become unchafed, and we are marching to Zion.
We thank you for this great blessing, and may we, as your saved people,
sing for joy. Help us and bless us, we pray
in Christ’s name, amen.