The God Who Keeps His Promises

Does God see me? Is God looking? Does he see what's happening in my life? I think there's two occasions in which we typically ask this question. One, does God see me when I'm in despair? Does God see my suffering? Does God know my trouble? Does God see what I'm facing? And does he care? We want to know that God sees our trouble and that he cares. The second occasion, I think, which we usually ask this question is when we're feeling guilty over sin. Does God see what I've done? Does God know the sin in my life? Does God know the things I have done? And does he still love me? This morning, we're going to be looking at God seeing his people. We're going to see that God sees us. He God sees his children. He's always watching over us. He's always caring for us. God sees us in our despair, even when we don't feel him seeing us. God sees us in our sin. And he loves us, even though we are sinners. Our message this morning comes from Exodus, chapter two, as we continue to walk through the book of Exodus, the beginning of verse 11, and the message this morning is this. God sees his promised people and keeps his promises to them, even when they reject him. God sees his promised people and keeps his promises to them, even when they reject him. We do a brief overview before we read our section of Scripture this morning. God has brought his people, Israel, into Egypt. Egypt is going to be the great incubator for the people of Israel. That's where God's going to grow them and multiply them and make them strong. That language is repeated over and over in Genesis and Exodus 1. Sorry, we're in Exodus. He's going to grow his people. Nothing hinders God's plan. Even Pharaoh treating his people harshly. Pharaoh oppressing them, putting taskmasters over them. Even Pharaoh Commanding. That the children, the males born into Israel are to be killed at birth, even a decree that all the male children to be decreed, nothing hinders God's plan. Then God saves one particular boy. Moses floating there on the waters of destruction and God sends Pharaoh's own daughter. To save him. God puts the one who is going to deliver Israel out of the house of slavery and Pharaoh's own house. What a powerful. Glorious, gracious God. The child is a Hebrew servant and the son of royalty, and he is going to be the instrument by which God saves his people. And here we see the beginnings of Moses. Now we're jumping ahead 40 years. As Axe tells us, Stephen's speech that Nick read. And as I read the passage, I want you to listen for a few words. There's striking and there's killing in this passage. Some important words. There's striking and there's killing. They're repeated over and over again. They really get the story going. And then there's a lot of language that distinguishes the Egyptians from the Hebrews. There's the brothers of Moses, his people, the Hebrews, and there's the Egyptians. We see a great distinction between the two people, God's people and the people of Egypt. And then finally, verses 23 to 25. Listen for how Israel cries out to God. They groan for God's deliverance and help his rescue. God sees them. He hears them, he remembers his covenant, and he knows them. It's a very encouraging, powerful passage of scripture. Read with me, beginning in verse 11. One day when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man of the wrong, why do you strike your companion? He answered, who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you kill the Egyptian? Then Moses was afraid and thought, Surely the thing is known. When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well. Now the prince of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. The shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and saved them and watered their flock. When they came home to their father, Raul, he said, How is it that you have come home so soon today? They said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and even drew water for us and watered the flock. He said to his daughters, Then where is he? Why have you left the man? Call him that he may eat bread. And Moses was content to dwell with the man. And he gave Moses his daughter, Zipporah. She gave birth to a son. And he called his name Gishon, for he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land. During those many days, the king of Egypt died. The people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. God heard their groaning. God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel and God knew. The first thing we want to see this morning is that God will deliver his people who reject him. God will deliver his people who reject him. The story continues one day. So Moses is delivered by God's grace, by God's power. And then we just continue 40 years, as we know from Acts, happens. But our story just continues as if it was a more of a natural time period flow one day. We also know from Acts that Moses learned in the schools of Egypt with a primary emphasis on writing, which is very important for us because while Moses wrote so much of God's word, In God's wisdom, he had already been preparing him for his task and his calling. Now, Moses goes out. He goes out from Pharaoh's house and he goes to his people. The word there is even his brothers. He goes out to his people. The distinction is very strong. Now, we don't know if this is unusual going out, if this is the first time Moses has ever gone out of the house of Pharaoh. I doubt that's true. I assume Moses knows because he was raised by his mother in early years and he's aware of what's going on in Egypt. He knew his people were enslaved. He's not going out and just checking it out. When he goes out to see his people, he's going out with an intention to care for them. He's going out to his people to help them. He goes in to see his people and he goes in to his own brothers. I think there may be some allusion to Genesis 37 here. Joseph goes to his brothers and is rejected by them. I think there's a slight allusion to Genesis 37 here. The key there is that there's a strong distinction. He goes to his brothers. And Hebrews 11 even makes this clear. By faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasure of sin. I believe this going out as him making a distinct choice. He's going to be with his people. He's going to help his people. As he goes out, he sees them. The same word that it has in verse 25 for God seeing is the same word that Moses sees. It's not just observation. He goes out and he's looking for them. His eyes of care and comfort. According to Acts, he goes out and he has the intent. According to Stephen's speech in Acts, he has the intent. He's going to deliver his people. He does so by killing the Egyptian. Now, I need to make sure I'm careful with my words here. The Egyptian is striking a Hebrew. So Moses goes and he strikes down the Egyptian and he buries him in the sand. It's very important that the word strike there is the same word that Moses used to recite the story. Verse 13. The next day. So Moses goes out of the house of Pharaoh. He strikes an Egyptian who's oppressing his fellow Hebrew. The next day, two Hebrew men are struggling now. And Moses confronts the one who is the oppressor, and he says, why do you strike your companion? His brother asked, who made you a prince and a judge over us? You already hear the rejection. You already hear that they're rejecting this Moses, and the answer, of course, is what God made him a prince and a judge over you. But we're still not mature yet in Moses, and we're still not quite there in the story for that to be the evident truth for Israel and Moses. Notice the Hebrew says, are you going to kill me? So far, this is where the language changes. Moses struck the man, the Egyptian struck the man, the Hebrew is striking the Hebrew. Now, when Moses confronts the Hebrew striking the Hebrew, The Hebrew responds to him and says, are you going to kill me? This is accusatory. He's upping the level of killing. It's accusing of murder. The striking could be just. We're going to get into that. But I believe that the language changes from strike to kill because we see this Hebrew trying to deflect. Who made you a judge over me? Are you going to kill me? So he's questioning his ability to be the judge, and then he wants to undermine his authority by saying, you're the murderer. Are you going to kill me as well? When Pharaoh heard this, he was fearful. He was fearful. We see later, Pharaoh finds out he wants to kill Moses. Again, the language has changed from striking to killing. Moses flees from his position in fear. Now, let's think about the striking. Let's go back and focus in. What does it mean that Moses struck down the Egyptians? Was this a just killing or was this a moral failure? It's hard for us, I think, with our Western minds to think striking could ever be morally acceptable. But I think there's a lot of evidence here to not to give Moses a break, but to see that this wasn't murder, necessarily. First of all, Moses could have used the word murder as he recited this. He could have condemned himself by using the same word from the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not kill. He could have condemned himself. Now, that's an argument from silence. I realize that's not the strongest argument. So let's look at the words again in Exodus. We have the rule I for I, lex talionis, an I for I morality, an I for I law, whereas if you kill someone, then you should be killed. Moses wrote that in Exodus, and I believe he's using the same word striking for the Egyptian and striking for Moses to possibly justify this as a lex talionis, an I for I action. Another way we could look at this is in Exodus 12, 29. God strikes down the Egyptians. It's possible Moses, being the deliverer of God, is putting himself in the action of God. He's striking down as God himself will strike down. Now, this is all from word studies, which aren't fruitless, but I don't think they really give us a conclusion. I think the story does. The point of this story isn't Moses' moral failure in striking down this Egyptian. Moses' failure is that he flees in fear. Moses' failure is that he is afraid. He clearly feels the calling of God to be the deliverer. He wants to go out and be the deliverer. Stephen makes that very clear. He thought they would understand that he was going to be the agent by which God delivers them. His failure isn't in the killing. The focus of his failure is in his fear and his fleeing. Of course, let's look again to Stephen. The divine commentator on this passage, the inspired commentary shows that the storyline also points to another failure. Moses' failure was fleeing in fear, but the real emphasis of this story is on God's people rejecting God's deliverance. Act seven, verse twenty three. When he was 40 years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel, and seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand. But they did not understand. Moses is going out to see them. Moses goes out to help them. And they reject him. They even betray him. How did Pharaoh know that he had killed an Egyptian? The Hebrews that were there must have told on their own deliverer. We see the focus here is not so much on the murder or the killing. of striking down from the fear and the failure and the rejection. Finally, this is written for Israelites and their sojourning. This reminds them of how over and over again Israel rejected God's appointed leader, Moses. God had appointed him to be the prince and the judge. And over and over again, Israel will be reminded they are a stiff neck, hard hearted people. This is meant to be a corrective against their grumbling and in ours. So the conclusion from this, it leads us to see that Moses is God's appointed deliverer and Israel has rejected him. Moses is clearly the deliverer. He goes out to save his brothers. He even saves these women from the shepherds. He has it in his DNA. God has gifted him and equipped him and built him up to be a deliverer. I believe God also wanted to send him into the wilderness to put him in a seminary of sorts. His training. Things needed to change from us. He needed to grow. And so God has set him apart for a season to grow outside of Egypt. But his fear is, or the major failure here in his being called the deliverer, is in his fear. Now remember, fear is this motif that just keeps running through Exodus. The main theme is God is with his people. He's going to deliver them. He's with them to deliver them. He's with them to make them a nation. He's with them to be the place in which God is worshiped purely and rightly. But fear constantly is brought back into the storyline. And here we see the great deliverer fail because of fear. Now, we also need to recognize this is written for us. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, all these things happen to be our example. As Christ said, all of the Old Testament is pointing to him. There's a great parallel here. Moses is God's deliverer for Israel at this time in the slavery of Egypt. Jesus is our deliverer today, and he delivers us from sin and evil. We can look and see some parallels. Deuteronomy 18, 18, I will raise up for them a prophet like you. He's speaking to Moses there. God says, I'm going to raise up a prophet like you. There's going to be another prophet that comes after you that's actually going to be better than you. And we can see how there may be small, semi, partial fulfillments of this as other prophets rose up. But Hebrews makes it clear. In many ways, throughout the days, God spoke to his people through his prophets, but now he's spoken to us through his son. The son is the prophet of God because he declares exactly what God's truth is at all times. So we see here that Moses has been replaced by Jesus as the prophet of Israel. He is the son who speaks to us a better word. Hebrews 3 says Jesus is greater than Moses. Moses was just simply a servant of the house who God called to lead for a season. Jesus is the son over the house. It is his house. He is the one worthy of more glory because he is the glorious son of God. He is the one who is without sin, which means he's able to be the perfect priest whose ministry is eternal. It never ends. He's one who's able to lay down his life. As a perfect substitute and a perfect sacrifice for the wrath of God is put on him instead of those who believe in him. If Moses failed by fleeing, we see the contrast in that Jesus remained faithful. Jesus feared God. He had no fear of Pontius Pilate. He had no fear of any Roman guard or any Jewish authority. He feared God. He sought to please God with his life and did so perfectly. He was the one without sin. When faced with death, he went silently as a lamb to be slain for his people. Because he knew the only way that we could live is if he died. See, Moses retreated when his people needed him. Jesus remained steadfast. He remained faithful even to the point of death. This is why Jesus is our prince. He is our prince that God has ultimately set over us. He is the prince of peace. He has come to make peace. Now, the problem in Exodus is that there's two nations that are at odds with one another. And the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, will one day put all wars to end and put all people in a proper relationship with one another. He will end all wars. We as we know already today, the primary focus of what Jesus was accomplishing on the cross was to give us peace with God. God is righteous, God is perfectly good, and God is the judge who will hold us accountable for every sin. That's why he sent Jesus to be the prince of peace so that the wrath of God would no longer be poured out upon us. The wrath of God would no longer be over us. He's the prince who brings peace by dying for us. He's the one who gives us peace with God, he puts us back into a right relationship with God, he reconciles us to God. By coming to be judged in our place. He dies on the cross for sinners. He will come again and he will judge sin. The second thing this story, I believe, is meant to teach us is that. We, like Israel, are a people prone to reject God. We're sinners, we're sinners saved by grace, but we're still sinners. who are still prone to reject the God of grace, the God of love, the God who is faithful. We need to realize that as God's people, we need help. Israel didn't realize they needed the help. They didn't realize that God had provided the help. God must come down to us to save us. We also need to realize that as God's people who need help, we often reject that help. John begins, John chapter 1 verse 11. Jesus came to his own and his own people did not receive him. Just one instance of a regular pattern of God's people rejecting God's deliverer. Stephen's whole speech, that's what he's arguing. That God's people, the Israelites, have always rejected God. And we as sinners We continue to reject God. There's two specific ways I believe we reject God. One, we reject his righteous rule over us. We reject his righteous rule over us. He is the great lawgiver. It's not Moses' law, it was God's law. Now we have the law of Christ. But we reject that he is right. That he is good, that he is wise, and all that he has commanded us, they're wise instructions. He has an authority over us. The very heart of our sin is the fact that we have rejected God's right to rule over us. That's what it means to be sinners. We go our own way, we think we can figure it out better rather than looking to God and saying, what have you determined? What have you declared right? We reject him. We reject what is good. We reject his good law. Now, this is this is counterculture, because our culture says the more moral, the more moral norms and codes you can throw off, the more liberated you are, the more you have experience and the more you really experience life. Such a dangerous law. God has given us provisions, God has given us commandments, God has given us prohibitions for our good. So what are the commands that we typically reject? Jesus said, take up your cross, deny yourself. We're supposed to be proclaiming him boldly and living for him zealously. We're supposed to be denying ourselves and living for him. But how much of what we do is actually focused on our wants and our desires rather than the focus of Christ in the kingdom. Jesus says to love your brothers, to even consider them more important than yourself, to consider their interests more important than your own. This is a good command from Jesus Christ, our Lord. But we so easily reject this out of our selfishness. We're commanded not to love the world or the things of the world. We're commanded not to love money. We're commanded not to love the accumulation and the spending of things for our own selves. We need to reject our selfishness rather than reject the command of Christ. Jesus commands us not to be unequally yoked. If you're single, this is a very important commandment, and it is for your good. God desires for you to have a spouse, wives, young women. You need a husband who's going to take you to church for your godliness. He desires to lead you in the home, in prayer, in scripture reading, and in godliness. Don't settle for anything less. This is for your good. The second way we reject God is we reject his love and grace. We reject his love and grace. Oftentimes, we get built up in our own self-righteousness. We don't see our need for him. We get built up and usually comparing ourselves to other people. It's easy to look around and see somebody who's less righteous than you think you are. And so we set the bar low. So we can stand above it and feel good about the fact that we're better than someone else. Self-righteousness, the main symptom of is always looking around and judging other people. Because that makes you feel better about how good you are. Truth is, our standard isn't determined by other people, our standard is determined by God. And we are all far below that standard. See, we reject Christ when we say we don't need him. Jesus Christ came to die for sinners. When we deny that we are sinners in need of his grace and his mercy, we're denying Christ. If we ever think there's something in us that made God love us, we're denying Christ. We're the sinners that receive everything. Stop rejecting God's grace in your need of them. The second way we reject God's, we reject God is by refusing his grace. By believing his promise that he loves you. This happens when we get so overwhelmed with guilt, this is the opposite problem of the self-righteous person. We get so overwhelmed with our own guilt. That we can't believe that Jesus would still love us. We can't believe that Jesus' death would be sufficient to forgive us. We're rejecting the power of God to forgive our sins. We're pretending that our sin is more powerful than God. We're rejecting the power of the cross and the love of Christ. We're not trusting his word that declares you are forgiven. One last thing before we move on to the next section. Israel suffered the consequences of rejecting Moses. Forty more years go by. A whole generation is born. A whole generation dies off without being delivered because of the consequence of their rejecting God. Sin has consequences. If you're not a Christian this morning, I want you to know the consequences of your sin. God hates sin. God's wrath is against sin. His wrath is against your sin. Now his wrath will be against your sin when you die. Unless you believe in Jesus Christ, who removes that wrath, there is a hell, there is a judgment, the language of Scripture with fire, I don't even believe it begins to describe the agony of what it is like for a sinner to come into the presence of a holy and good God and be consumed by his glory. There's hope. There's hope to be out of that, that being consumed, there's hope to be out from underneath that judgment, and it's Jesus Christ in him alone. He came to die in your place so that the wrath of God will be put on him for your sins. He rose again to proclaim you have eternal life, you must believe in him. If you hear his voice today, do not Second section. God will provide for his people in exile. God will provide for his people in exile. We pick up in verse 16. Now, the priest of Midian had seven daughters and they came and drew water and fill the troughs to water their father's flock. The shepherds came out and drove them away, but Moses stood up and saved them and watered their flock. When they came home to their father, Raul, he said, How is this that you have come home so soon today? They said an Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and even drew water for us and watered the flock. He said to his daughters, Then where is he? Why have you left the man? Call him that he may eat bread. And Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter, Zipporah, She gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gershom, and he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land. Moses flees Egypt. He gets out of the reach of Pharaoh, and he puts himself in the place of rest and of salvation. He goes to a well. He has the life source of water there. This is where people will come and gather. He sits by the well, and he then sees these women being abused by shepherds. And this calling that God has put on him to be a deliverer, it comes out. He rescues them from the shepherds. They even use that word, he delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds. And these shepherds must have always been harassing the women because their father, when they come home, says, how have you come home so soon today? Something's different. You were able to get the water quicker, the shepherds somehow. What happened? Well, this Egyptian, he rescued us. He looks like an Egyptian, even though we know from the previous story, he's clearly a Hebrew. We see here just the focus that Moses is in a foreign land, his calling is still very clear, he is the deliverer that God has brought, but he's in a foreign land and God has put him in a foreign land, as we said earlier, to really train him up, to teach him and to call him out in a miraculous way and send him back. The man who fled in fear is going to have to go back. Moses here is experiencing what it's like to be in the wilderness. The son's name is an idiom for a stranger in a foreign land. He is sojourning as Israel is sojourning in Egypt and will sojourn in the wilderness. We see here this grace. God keeping Moses, preparing him to send him back to save the people who have already rejected him. This is God's grace. I want to spend the rest of our time together on our last section. During the many days the king of Egypt died and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help, their cry for rescue from the slavery came up to God and God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and God saw the people of Israel and God knew. There's a number of passages in Exodus that really just focused in on God's character and his attributes and his actions. This is the first one. We haven't heard really a lot from God in the sense that it says God did this and God did that. But we've understood God being the active agent behind all things that have been taking place for Israel's good and in Moses' deliverance. Here we bring a focus on God. who he is. And what he's doing and what he's about to do. Notice, it's a real transitional passage. Verse 23, during those many days, during the 40 years while Moses is gone. The people cried out. It also begins this new section, the king of Egypt died. Now flip back over first eight. What began all the trouble to begin with? Now there arose a new king of region. He's the one who treated them harshly. He's the one who oppressed them. He's the one who started to murder their male infants and children. Well, that king died. But the tension continues. Israel is still oppressed. Israel is still enslaved. They are still in trouble. And we see these, well, the agony of Israel. They groan out to God. They cry out for help. For rescue. For 40 years. This is what Israel is left to do to trust the promises of God that he made in Genesis to their fathers, that he will come, he will bring someone back to rescue them. And all they can do is cry out. And we can see now that God was hearing them. He was remembering his covenant, he saw them and he knew them. Now, he heard his people. Now, this isn't like you're walking through the forest and you hear something by accident. It's not as if God just all of a sudden, he hears them. No, God is always listening. It's not something that happens to God. God has put his ears towards his people. He has focused his attention on them because he loves them and he's listening to them. He doesn't happen to hear them one day. He is constantly giving his attentive ear To Israel, he's not preoccupied with anything but Israel. So he he hears them. And he hears them for 40 years without, as far as we know, ever saying, I hear you. There's a little bit of a lesson of prayer here. They persevered for 40 years in prayer. Wondering if God's hearing them. Crying out, where is it a liver, please come rescue us, please come help us and. Forty years, God doesn't act, but God is always hearing them and caring about them. This passage is for us. If you're ever wondering, does God hear me go back to this passage? Yes, God hears you just as he heard the people of Israel in slavery, even if you don't experience whatever you're expecting, if it's God, as if God is hearing you, God hears you. He's listening. And our problem is even more sure than that. If we're a believer in Jesus Christ, we're speaking to him as sons and daughters. We're going authoritatively into the presence of God and speaking to the Father. God hears us when we cry out. He remembers us. Now, again, he's never forgotten. This is an idiomatic language. Israel is at the forefront of his mind. Israel hasn't forgotten. He always remembers. He had been focused on them. He delivered his deliverer, Moses. He's now training him. He's going to bring him back. God is focused on these people and he's remembering the promises he's made and he's keeping them. He doesn't forget. We're the ones that forget. God never forgets his promises. We're the ones that forget his promises. God never forgets the relationship he has with us. We're the ones that forget. We're the ones that fail. Third action, he knows. This is an intimate, caring knowledge of his people. And then we have to acknowledge God knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows our weaknesses, he knows our sins more than we know them, and he loves us even still. In reality, he knows us better than we know ourselves. So we're crying out to God and we're saying, God, would you end the suffering? God knows you're suffering. But he also knows that that suffering may be the only remedy to the sin that can so easily entangle you and destroy you. God knows you. He knows what's best for you. Everything will work out for your good and his glory, according to his plan. He knows you. He knows how to care for you. He knows when to deliver you from the suffering. He knows how to deliver you from your sin. If you feel like he's waiting too long. Start seeking out what is happening in your suffering, which could be the solution to sin. As I said before, this is a real transitional point in Egypt. For watching this as a play, this is really a narrative declaration. I think the stage is being the curtains dropped and the stage is being removed. We're putting up a new stage and the narrator comes on. The people were crying out. And God heard them. It's a great transitional point in the story because it's not passive. action of God here is he is listening, he's remembering, he's seeing, he's knowing. And this is important because he's about to stretch out his mighty hand. In this passage, I think he's so focused on God's people. And really what we're seeing here is he's bringing back his mighty right arm of salvation, his hand of deliverance. We see him focused in and about to bring about the great act of Exodus. He's going to draw his children out, he's going to send Moses back in, he's going to destroy Egypt and he's going to prove that he is a great one God of all creation and Israel is his people. He's going to do it so decisively. He's going to demonstrate his power. We see him about to just bring that mighty right arm down. It's going to remind us of How faithful he is. He keeps his promises. God is faithful, what he said he is going to do, he's going to do. We can look back throughout all of Scripture and see how he's been so patient with sinners, how he's been so faithful with the saints. And we can also look back and see how he's provided a greater deliverer than Moses. One that as we go into God's presence, there's no guilt before the throne of God will stand. Because Christ is our surety, Christ is our redeemer, he has died for us, he has forgiven us, he's reconciled us, he has given us peace. He has destroyed our oppressor and reconciled us to God. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, you were good. We thank you for your faithfulness to us. Jesus, we thank you for your obedience and humility. Becoming like us, but without sin to die for us. We thank you that in you we have confidence, a sure and steadfast anchor for our souls so that we can come to God the Father and praise him having peace, being as adopted sons. Spirit, we pray now that you would continue to minister to us. Do not let us forget the words of the gospel we've heard and sung about and read. Exalt the son so that we see him in his power and his love. Lift up our souls out of the muck and the mire and the sin that entangles them. and draw us to you. Help us to see your faithfulness. Help us to see your glory. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.