Praise

Good morning. It's good to see your eyes, those of you who are with us here. Thank you, Melanie, for reading this psalm. We're concluding 2 Samuel. We've been walking through 1 and 2 Samuel for some time. And we're getting to one of his psalms now. And it's like Psalm 18 in many ways. I want to take the opportunity to just thank everybody who served up here. Thank you, the Garlands, and the way you served us with just a steadiness and a faithfulness for many years. I realize it's kind of uncomfortable to have a rope next to you on a pew. Uncomfortable to have a mask on. Maybe too comfortable to be at home. Difficult times, but we are thankful that we can come and we can hear and we can rejoice in the God of salvation. We are reminded from this world and our events, this is not the way it's supposed to be. We need salvation. We need a renewal. This world is not the way it's supposed to be. We are in 2 Samuel chapter 22. And we're in this final segment of Samuel. Samuel is about telling Israel and the church how God provided for himself a king. They needed a king because they kept doing what was right in their own eyes. They kept pursuing evil. And Samuel is about how God provides his king. First they want their own king, Saul, that was a failed project, and then God provides David, and David is a man after God's own heart, and we see him mighty in battle, we see him fierce, we see him as a reverent man of God, and then we see him fail. And for the last few weeks, beginning in verse 13 with that new declaration and Absalom, let's just be honest, it's been a painful last few weeks. I felt it, I don't know if you felt it. Amening that, come on. But now we're in a psalm. And it's a cause for rejoicing. This last segment, it's sin, and then soldiers, and then a psalm, psalm, soldiers, and sin. And next week we'll look at, when we come back to Samuel, we'll be looking at that next psalm and David's sin. But here we see what appears to be a psalm selected of David's to capture that other part of his life. His declaring praise to God in prayer. His singing to the Lord for his salvation. We've seen a eulogy of Saul in the way David's are able to articulate grief, but here's a psalm. So we've seen David as a mighty man of war. We've seen David as a mirror of our own sin. Now we see David teaching us how to pray. It is interesting that Samuel opened with a psalm, but it wasn't David. It was Hannah. And those two prayers have a lot of similarities. God is the horn of salvation. There's a longing for the anointed. There's a victory, there's strength. Hannah opens the book in prayer so that Samuel comes, so that the people hear the word of God, and then God provides his king, and this king is now going to end his, we're gonna end his meditating on his reign with his prayer. Psalm is a unique kind of literature. It's a prayer. It's a song. It uses repetition. We call it parallelism. It looks like he's saying the same thing multiple times, but oftentimes he's emphasizing or contrasting. We can just see that in the very first lines. Here the repetition. There's a pattern of 3-3-2-2-2. The Lord is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold, my refuge, my Savior. You saved me. He's trying to make a point. God is mighty to save, and that's why he is praiseworthy. So this is David's psalm. But I need to convince you it's yours as well. This is our psalm. We read last week, 2 Timothy 3.16, every word of God is profitable and good for equipping the man of God, the woman of God, for the good works, to make him competent. This psalm is a way of us to meditate upon what God has done. So we're gonna look at it with three different lenses. Am I trying to pull off three sermons in one? Maybe. I think the only way to really understand this psalm and take the power of it and what it means for us, we're gonna look at it from David's perspective, and then we're gonna look at it from Jesus's perspective. This psalm is actually more about Jesus than David. John Calvin says, the content of this Psalm is more fitting of Jesus than David. Charles Spurgeon said this of Psalm 18, which is just like 2 Samuel 22. The Messiah, our Savior, is evidently, over and beyond David or any other believer, the main and chief subject of this Psalm. So David, then Jesus, and then us. This is for us, and if we have any doubt about that, We can turn to Romans 15, found on page 949 of your Pew Bible. Where Paul says, for I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs. Christ came so that every promise God made would be fulfilled. He is the truth to confirm every promise has been fulfilled. In verse nine, in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy as it is written, therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles and sing to your name. Christ fulfills this song. That's quoting the last section there, verse 15. I've tried to apply, I'll give you an outline. It's on page seven of your bulletin. Hope that helps. Let's jump into our psalm. First, the Lord is my rock and my salvation. As I was trying to show, there's a pattern, there's 3-3-2-2-2, and all this is really pointing to one big point. You can trust God for salvation. These are truth and declarations about God. Yahweh, the covenant God. He's a rock. And when you think of rock, don't think of something you pick up in the yard. Think of humpback. Think of immovable. Think of sturdy and strong. A fortress. Deliver. If you actually look at all these, it's rock, fortress, strong things. Deliver. Action. God, rock, I take refuge. Shield, salvation. Stronghold, refuge. My Savior. It becomes personal. You save me from violence. These are truths that David begins by declaring who God is. Kind of a preamble, an introduction, so that you know who I'm talking about. He's reliable, sturdy, strong. He delivers, he rescues. It bookends with 51, the great salvation, the mighty God. I wonder, how would you describe God if you had The Lord is what? You have to come up with 10 declarations. What would it look like? Write out your own psalm. What would it be? How would you want to tell yourself and your children and your spouse and your friends and your neighbors, what comes to mind first? Tozer tells us whatever we think about God is the most important thing about us. What is it that we think first and foremost about God? Let me ask another question, because that might be more helpful. How do we doubt God most regularly? What kind of doubts creep into our mind regarding God? Is he able? It's a strength question. Does he care? It's a love question. Is he reliable? That's a presence question. Our psalm is established to teach you that he is strong, He cares. He is present. He will save. Let's look to our second section. Call upon the Lord who is worthy of praise. Verse 4, I call upon the Lord. Verse 7, in my distress I called. To my God I called. From his temple he heard my voice and my cry came to his ears. There's four, there's a pattern. I called and I am saved. I called on him who is worthy and I am saved. That's a bit of a summary statement. And the trouble, verses five and six, the waves of death, the torrents of destruction, the cords of shale, they entangle me, the snares of death. This isn't a small problem. This is terrifying. So he calls on him who is truly revered. From fear we turn to reverence. He calls upon him who is worthy of praise. Now one of the most important truths we want to remind you over and over again is that our God speaks. We take that for granted. Our God speaks so that we can know. We can know who He is. We can know who we are. We can know what He expects of us. We can know how to be pleased in Him and how to please Him. He doesn't leave us ignorant. He speaks. But here's the other truth about God. He hears us. He speaks and He listens. It's a personal God who desires a relationship, who designed us for a relationship, and he's listening, his ear is bent. I mean, verse seven, from his temple, the holy God in the heavens, the holy God high above all of creation, the holy God in his temple, he hears. My cry comes to his ear. He does care. He does listen. His ear is bent towards his image bearers who call upon him. His ear is bent towards his people whom he has given his name and said I'll be with you. His ear is bent towards us who are his children. David knows this God, he has spoken with him. David knows this God in the way he has called him and loved him. His heart has heard the word of God. He delights in the law of God. He sees it as good. And so he's able to call upon him. David has a bold prayer life. But Christian, you can have a better prayer life than David, the author of many Psalms. A man who God set apart to teach us how to pray. How is it we could have a better prayer life than David? David didn't get to call God dad. David didn't hear, come to me and make any request according to my will in the name of my son who purchased you with his blood and I will hear you as my child. That's the privilege we have on this side of the cross, being sealed by the spirit of adoption. We have a good father whose ear is bent towards his children who longs to hear us, who longs to listen. What does he hear? What does he hear? God is reliable. God is caring. God is strong. Call to him. A third point, the Lord rescues because he delights. Notice the end there, it's extremely important and just powerful, this little phrase, he rescued because he delights. Okay, the Lord is my rock and my strength, he saves me. I called upon him and he heard me. And then we see verses eight to 16, this rumbling, terrifying scene of God coming. And then 17 to 20, he rescued me because he delights in me. This section is long. This section is filled with glorious word pictures and metaphors. The earth reeled and rocked and the foundations of heaven trembled and quaked because he was angry. Smoke went up from his nostrils and a vowing fire from his mouth, glowing coals flamed forth from him. He even talks about coming into the chair of the angels. There's something here cosmic, heaven and earth are coming together in a way that's terrifying. I remember the year of 9-11 and going to a fireworks show that had an air show preceding it. I'm not a big, not been to a lot of air shows, didn't really, looking forward to it, it was in the hot sun, looking for the fireworks. And the air show started with a copter saving somebody from a river, you know, fake saving, it was all planned. And then they had the little jets, and then the fighter jets, those were impressive. And then the grand finale, the bomber. You heard it. Then a bit later, you felt it, your chest shaking. And then you saw it, and then you felt it more. It was terrifying. I was a citizen of the United States. It's my jet. I'm not actually supposed to be scared of it, but the way it rumbled and shook my being, it was terrifying. But that kind of rumbling, shaking is like playing a little note on that piano compared to God coming down in His anger, seeking to save His people. God, when he comes and shakes, when he comes to care for and provide and be present for his people, his anger isn't against his people. His anger is for those who are attacking. This is terrifying. Smoke, fire, coals, quaking, reeling. There's thunder and lightning. When God comes, it's terrifying for those who are against Him. But look at verses 17 to 20. He sent from on high. He took me. He drew me out of many waters. He rescued me from those who hated me. Look at verse 17. He drew me out of many waters. That's an interesting word picture in the midst of all this. David is praying this probably around 1000 B.C. The exodus took place 1446 B.C., about 440 years earlier. He's alluding back to that, why? Well, as we always wanna allude back to the cross as the moment, the significant event of our salvation, so is the exodus. God destroying the most powerful nation in the most amazing way and parting the sea and carrying his people across and then crushing his enemies so that the nations would know he's the one God. So that Israel would know he is in control and the only God. David's saying that's just like this. God's at it again. He saves and he saves and he saves and he saves. He always saves his people when they align themselves with him and they call out to him. Notice verses 18 to 19. He rescued me from my strong enemy, from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me. They confronted me in the day of my calamity. And then that next phrase, that's one of those phrases you gotta memorize. But the Lord. That's that story changing phrase. That's the gospel phrase of scripture. There was an enemy too strong that hated and surrounded. I was hopeless, helpless, but the Lord. It's a declaration that changes every story and every believer must have but the Lord moments. But the Lord stories. That's what a testimony is. It's the Lord story. It concludes, verse 20, he brought me out into a broad place, a safe place. He rescued me, he delivered me, again, Exodus language. Because he delighted in me. Now this is David speaking of some moment where he was terrified. The introduction said whenever the nations were raging against him or Saul, Saul never really had the upper hand on David. This must have been a Philistine moment here. But this cosmic language, we don't really know of anything like that in David's history. That's why this is first and foremost Jesus. The interesting thing there is it looks like God doesn't deliver Jesus because he dies on a cross. We have to think about that for a moment, because here it talks about how God and the angels are gonna shoot arrows, they're gonna destroy everybody. You know, it's interesting, in Matthew 26, when Jesus is betrayed, what does Peter do? Peter does a Peter thing. He gets his sword out to try to fight the Roman army. Jesus says, put away the sword. Don't you know that if I ask my Father He's gonna send legions of our holy ones. He's gonna call a heavenly army. These Roman guys, they don't stand a chance. My father would send the most terrifying cavalry down to wipe out everyone. If I just ask. And then he says this. But then how would scripture be fulfilled? If I need an army, I got an army. But I've made promises I have to keep. I have to go and die. Let them take me. And then what happens? There's a fake court. There's false accusations. Jesus carries his cross. What happens when he dies? The earth reeled and rocked. The foundations of the heavens trembled. They quaked. The earth grieved the death of its creator. God's love for us has been satisfied by the presence of Jesus Christ here in this room. The anger of the Lord overcomes power sickness. The anger of the Lord overcomes the sickness of power sickness. It is being satisfied fully by the presence of God Himself. God's praise. God's praise for what He was doing for you. God's glory and power. God, that's just crazy. The man of God. The child of Eve is going to crush your head. Jesus, when he dies in the cross, he defeats death, and he crushes the head of Satan. Secondly, he defeats the world, that system of rebellion that is raging against God, that God talks about in Psalm 2, another royal psalm of deliverance. The nations rage, and God will destroy them. The invitation is kiss the king and he'll be merciful. So there's two enemies. Satan, that's the mighty one who's greater than us. The world, that system that we don't even realize we're part of that's rebelling against God. The third enemy, our flesh. The sinful desires that are within, not outside. The sinful desires that are deceptive and powerful Jesus defeats these enemies with his death and resurrection. What about us? The psalm is more about Jesus than us. How do we look at this? We look at him and we see he's our rock. We look at him and see that he is the one who has disarmed the authorities in the heavenly places. Satan wants to accuse you, and here's the problem, he can accuse you of sin you've actually committed, And Jesus says, no, I died for that sin. He's innocent. She's not guilty. The world and what it presents to us with the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the part of life, we can resist that temptation. The flesh, we can know the truth so we can recognize the deceitful desires versus the ones God wants from us. Christians, Jesus died. Jesus died. The world is not the way it's supposed to be. Jesus died so that we can live in his victory. Not so we can gain our own, so that we can actually participate in his. What's the first step? Go back and memorize verses two to seven. Know He is the rock, know He is the deliverer, and know that you can call on Him, and know that He hears you. There's a hymn that captures the call to prayer well. What a friend we have in Jesus. Hymn 182 in the hymnal in your pew. What a friend we have in Jesus. All our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. Oh, what peace we often forfeit. Oh, what needless pain we bear. All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. If you're weak, heavy laden, Jesus says, come to me, call upon me. Our next section, the Lord rescues the court of the righteousness. This appears to be the center of the psalm. This appears to be the centerpiece of the psalm. And it's strange to our Protestant ears. Is David boasting of his righteousness? Is David saying he's worthy of salvation? Of course not. 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, those are all one unit. 21 and 25, they connect that unit. 23 is the center and the main point. And this is following up on he delights in me. David can go and pray with confidence because God delights in him. And he says he dealt with me according to my righteousness. He rewarded me. Verse 22, I kept the ways. Verse 24, I was blameless, I kept. Verse 25, the Lord rewarded me. Verse 23, David recognizes the source of his righteousness. His rules were before me, and from his statutes I did not turn aside. The law is good. Know what he meant? The law is good. It puts before us God's rules, God's goodness. There is a righteousness we can have because of Christ. Now let's back out and just pull up the tension. Romans 3 says no one is righteous, no one is good. All right, amen. There's a reality that no one can earn their way into the favor and good standing of God because we've all sinned, we've all gone astray, we've all rebelled against God. We need righteousness imputed. We need to call upon God and say, forgive me. And what God does is he takes our sin, puts it on Jesus, takes his righteousness, puts it on us. It's imputed, it's alien, it's foreign to us. It's a gift. received by faith alone. And yet the same author of Romans will say, follow me as I follow Christ. We have to see their principles, verses 26 and 28. With the merciful, he will show himself merciful. With the blameless, he will show yourself blameless. With the purified, he will deal purely. He saves the humble. brings the proud down. We too often want to hinge upon that important truth of everyone being unrighteous and then use it as an excuse for not pursuing righteousness in Christ. You don't earn God's favor, but once God has given you that favor, once God has given you that righteousness, he says, get to work doing good works of righteousness. We do not earn God's love with our righteousness but we enjoy God's love with righteousness. We do not earn God's love with our righteousness, but we enjoy his love with our righteousness. My fear is because we want to make sure we hold on to that gospel by faith alone is that we use that as actually a crux to just be lazy and not pursue good works. Jesus saved us, not because of our works, but so that we could be committed to his good work. There is something important about our practice of righteousness as it relates to prayer. Let me give you some examples. James 5 declares very clearly that the prayer of the righteous man is heard by God. That's the New Testament. Elijah's the example. There's a declaration there. There's something about a righteous man, someone who has believed in Jesus and walking with Jesus and is walking in a clean way, in a blameless way. His prayers hurt. Let me flip that around and be terrified. Husbands, look up, look up, husbands. People wanna be husbands. Peter says, live with your wife in an understanding way. If you don't, God won't listen to your prayer. It's one of those terrifying passages in all scripture. If it's not terrifying, you need to believe in Jesus. But think about it. If you do not love my daughter, if you do not care for the image bearer that I have given over to you in marriage, I will stop listening. The way we live has significant consequence on our prayer life, on the way we enjoy God, on the way we know God, the way we delight in Him. James 5 gives us that declaration, the prayer of the righteous man will be heard. 1 Peter 3 gives us that warning that if you're not living the way God has called you to in your own marriage, He will stop listening to you And then 1 John tells us, pray anything according to the will of God and be heard. Verse 31, that's how he concludes this section. This God, his way is perfect. The word of the Lord proves true. He is a shield for all who take refuge in him. If we go back to the very first declaration, verse four, I call upon him who is praiseworthy. I think I can say this is universally true. We all call upon someone or something when we're in trouble. We call them coping mechanisms. And why do we go to them? Because they work. But they're usually dangerous, deadly, destructive. Entertainment, isolation, inebriation, immoral sex satisfaction, self-pity, anger, We keep going on and on. We could be going to the God who created everything with one word. We could be going to the God who showed us his love and power and the cross and the resurrection. We could be going to the God who's being grieved because the Holy Spirit is being so quenched. What do you do if that's you today? Confess your sin. Oh, he's so quick to forgive. He's so slow to anger. Call on him in a confession of sin. Christ will wash you with the power of his blood and the spirit. Confess and pursue being the righteous man and woman God called you to be. Fifth point, the Lord rescues by giving strength. This section really just keeps emphasizing how God is with him and for him, and his strength is what gives him the power. But notice here, there's an activity of David. I did this. I consumed them. I pursued them. Why? Because God was with me. God gave me strength. Okay, so David is fighting a real-life enemy who's trying to destroy him. Who should we try to fight like this? Not others. Especially not the one another's. What kind of battle should we think about as we think about this kind of text? What kind of enemy needs to be destroyed? What kind of enemy needs to be crushed with this kind of strength? Well, let's go back to the enemies that Jesus destroyed on the cross. Satan, the world, and our flesh. Satan, the world, and our flesh. And let's just focus there on our flesh. We are supposed to kill something. It's our sin. Romans 8, mortify sin. Colossians 3, mortify sin. Why would you want to mortify sin? Because it's trying to kill you. Why would you mortify sin? Because now that you are united with Christ, you are wed to him who is perfect righteousness and perfect love. Committing and entertaining sin is the most unnatural thing you could do. Put sin to death. It requires active mortification. It's not lazy passivity, oh Lord, I'm just gonna lay here and keep falling into this sin until you do something. No, it's God, I'm going to actively do everything I can to put this sin to death. I was just discussing C.S. Lewis' book, Great Divorce, with some young men. One of the little teachings there is a young man who has a red dragon on his shoulder. And the angel of the Lord said, I'll kill it for you. And the man, ah, you know, I know he's annoying and he's pesky, because the red dragon just kind of walks around his neck all the time and whispering things, and he's always agitating and really annoying. And the man said, no, I know he's annoying, but he has some benefit, and he's not that bad, and it's OK. And the spirit said, if you ask me, I'll kill it. And eventually the young man gives up and says, all right, kill it. The dragon falls dead. Then what happens next is perfectly C.S. Lewis. The dragon turns into a white stallion and the young man becomes a man and he rides off. That red dragon represents lust. The white stallion represents what God designed for a sexual relationship to be between a husband and a wife that can be enjoyed and delighted in properly. But you gotta kill the red dragon first. And you can't Ask God to kill it unless you're ready to kill it. Reminds me of Augustine. Lord, give me chastity, just not yet. Now the Christian says, give me eyes that are pure. Give me hands that are washed that I may see you and serve you. Give me a heart that's renewed so that I can love you. When we see sin for what it is, it's destructive and it keeps us from a true, loving relationship with God. You have to actively fight trusting the strength of God. Verse six, the Lord's rescue is for everyone. Let me read the entirety of the section, 44 to 49, and here the book ends. You delivered, you delivered. You delivered me from strife with my people. David had strife with his own people, but God has delivered them. You kept me as the head of the nations. People whom I had not known served me. Foreigners came cringing to me. As soon as they heard of me, they obeyed me. Foreigners lost heart. They came trembling out of their fortress. The Lord lives and blessed be my rock, and exalted be my God, the rock of my salvation, the God who gave me vengeance and brought down people under me, who brought me out of my enemies. You exalted me above those who rose against me. You delivered me from men of violence. I want us to see here that this rescue is for everybody. And while David could say he is the King of the nation of all nations. He is the king of Israel and Israel's supposed to be the leader for all nations. This is first and foremost about Jesus. This has to be about Jesus. Remember Romans 15, it said God had to be true to the promises to the patriarchs. Genesis 12, one to three, the patriarch, Abraham. What did God tell Abraham? I'll bless you, I'll bless you, I'll bless you, I'll bless you. And you will be a blessing to the nations. God blessed you, you're supposed to be a blessing. I will bless you and you will bless the nations. God's design for Israel was to be a light for the nations. Jeremy 4 says, if you'll just follow my laws, the nations will come and they'll say, wow, what a wise and powerful God. I want to be part of this people because of this God. Genesis 12, one to three, I will bless you, I will bless you, I will bless you, and you'll be a blessing to all nations. What happens next? Abraham gets scared because of a famine, goes down to Egypt, brings a curse. Abraham, though a man of faith, failed. Israel, though having some men of faith and women of faith, failed. Jesus does not fail. He's a blessing to all who call upon him. Israel was disobedient. Christ is obedient. Israel had many advantages. One of them was the oracles of God. One of them is that the Savior will come through them. And so when Jesus is born, he fulfills these promises. When Jesus dies, he fulfills these promises. When Jesus rises, he fulfills these promises. When Jesus says to the disciples, wait until power from on high comes, and then I want you to declare the message of salvation to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and everybody. Why? So that Jesus can be the head of the nations. It's a different kind of people now. God's people are a different kind of people. One of the things that was so attractive about the early church was that it was a very inclusive people. People throughout Rome, poor hung out with poor and rich with rich. Slave with slave, owner with owner, master with master. The ethnicities didn't interact. The genders hardly interacted. The social classes didn't interact. And then there's a church, where all kinds of people who have nothing in common, who socially should not be together, start eating together. See, the church is supposed to be the most inclusive people. Remember tribe, tongue, nationality. Every kind of person, every class, every gender, every possible kind of person is supposed to be welcomed into the body of Christ. It is the most exclusive, but it's also the most exclusive. Because the only way in is to be bought by the blood of Christ. It is supposed to be the most inclusive. Anybody can come. But it has the highest standard of induction purchased by the precious blood of Christ. The church has too often prioritized things that are not the blood of Christ. The church has oftentimes said, let's reduce doctrine because it divides, but let's try to build ourselves around others that are just like us. It's too often been exactly the opposite of what Christ designed it to be. Do we realize most letters are actually written to solve the problem that we just want people like us around us? The Jew-Gentile problem is a problem of not wanting to embrace that God saves all kinds of people, and now that they are adopted in Christ, we have more in common with them than anybody else that might look like us? Romans, the granddaddy of all the Pauline epistles, We left over the rich theology, the propitiation for sin, the new Adam, the spirit and the adoption, and then the glorious chapters 9 to 11 of election. I think the right way to read Romans 1 to 11 is just getting you to the top of the mountain, the glorious mountain of doctrine, so that when we get there, we can start building a church. The glorious doctrines of Romans, it's all about getting to chapter 12, where we're gonna see how to actually conduct ourselves. And you know one of the primary commands of Romans 12 to 15? After all that glorious doctrine? Welcome one another. Welcome one another. As God welcomed you, we're welcomed By God, through the blood of Christ, we should be welcoming one another through the blood of Christ. That's the context of Romans 15, eight and nine. Where we find our passage, our last point, praise the Lord for his great salvation. For this I will praise you, O Lord, among the nations, and sing praises to your name. Great salvation he brings to his king. He shows steadfast love to his anointed, and David and his offspring forever. That last line, that's clearly David looking back to 2 Samuel 7. We don't know when this psalm was written. That line had to be written after 2 Samuel 7. Where David said, I want to build you a house. And God said, no, David, I don't need that. I'll build you a house. I'll build you a household. One of your sons will reign forever. He will be king. Jesus has come to be that king. Jesus has come to fulfill everything God has said about his great salvation. And it's not just a salvation for Israel, it's a salvation to be sung among the nations. Notice David begins, the Lord is my rock, my refuge, my deliverer, my fortress, he saves me, you have saved me, and therefore I called upon you who's praiseworthy. And now we conclude, I will praise you. Past tense, I called upon you who's praiseworthy. Notice here, I will praise you. This is our job. I will praise you. And notice it's praising among the nations. This is the whole point of what Paul is driving at with that section is, one, Jesus has fulfilled all the promises. That's a summary statement of Romans. God is true. He's righteous. He's fulfilled every promise. He's merciful. He's shown mercy to those who don't deserve it, which is everybody. And then he just goes through and makes all these declarations about rejoicing because he is the God of the Gentiles. He is the God of the Gentiles. He is the God of the Gentiles. Christians, are we going to rejoice in that great salvation? Seeing that we were defeated by our own sin and our own flesh, seeing that Jesus has defeated it, Therefore, we're not gonna embrace it, we're gonna confess it, and we're gonna try to kill it. We're going to try to walk together in a way that doesn't see all the differences that the world's gonna emphasize, but we're gonna see that we're all united by the blood of Christ to walk according to his way in his Holy Spirit. How do you do this? Well, we're sinners seeking to confess sin and rejoice in Jesus Christ. Look to the cross. Death is dead. The chains of sin are broken. New life was given so that we can pray, Lord, you are worthy of praise. Come help me. Help me in the moment of temptation. Help me in the moment of despair. Help me in the moment of eroding guilt. Help me in the pride of my self-pity. Help me. And then look to his law. How can I walk more? faithfully, how can I put to death sin that is unbecoming of my union with Christ? And notice how important it is. We gotta do this together. Singing praises together to the one king who rules with steadfast love forever. This is an invitation to confess our sins, Be forgiven. Walk in that forgiveness and walk in the good works that come from being forgiven. Will you pray with me?