Christ Church Washington D.C.

The worship of God in the name of Jesus Christ is not a weekly meeting of people who are interested in theological issues. It is a time when we gather together with our God. He meets with his people. When the words of the call to worship are uttered, we believe that something spiritual happens. Something actually happens. And in the spiritual realm, the roof retracts. The Holy Spirit gathers us up and takes us, escorts us into the heavenly places in order to worship God before the throne.
And that means that we’re not a little sectarian band worshiping God in a closed room. We’re worshiping God together with all the saints all over the world because the same thing is happening in every believing Christian church. The roof retracts and we all gather before the throne on the Lord’s day in order to worship Him together. And so consequently, we don’t believe that this is simply a special interest group. We believe that this is the body of Christ. This is something that God is doing in the world.
Has established in Christ humanity 2.0. Humanity 1.0 had some bugs. You and I are one of them. Humanity 1.0 was given to us in the garden. We rebelled against God and crashed. And the theologians call it the fall. I prefer to call it the crash. And God, in His great mercy, when the time was fully right, sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law.
And what’s happening in our worship, what’s happening in our Christian lives together, is that God is transforming us. He’s making us into something. And what He’s making us into, what He’s fashioning us into, is human beings. And He is using the material of wreckage of human being. So the wreckage of human being that was the result of the crash is now being formed and shaped into a new humanity,
humanity 2.0. And the template for that is the Lord Jesus Christ. And every worship service, additional progress is made toward that end. And so consequently, that is what we are doing here this morning. The text this morning is from Amos, chapter 5, verses 1 through 17. These are the words of God.
There is none to raise her up.
And they calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth. The Lord is His name. That strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress. They hate Him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor Him that speaketh uprightly.
For as much, therefore, as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat, ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them. Ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them. For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins. They afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right. Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time, for it is an evil time.
The Lord of hosts shall be with you as you have spoken. Hate the evil and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate. It may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph. Therefore the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord saith thus, Wailing shall be in all the streets, and they shall say in all the highways, Alas, alas, that they shall call the husbandmen to mourning, and such as are skillful of lamentation to wailing. And in all the vineyards shall be wailing, for I will pass through them, saith the Lord.
Father and gracious God, we thank you for your word, we thank you for the spirit that inspired it, and for that same spirit present here with us today. I pray that your Holy Spirit would take these words and apply to our hearts and lives exactly what we need to hear. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen. First, it’s wonderful to be here with you all. It’s a great blessing to me, and it’s a great blessing to the saints in Moscow.
Your sisters and brothers in Moscow. It’s just a privilege to be here. God is doing a wonderful thing, and don’t ever stop thanking him for it. In this passage, we’re going to have to follow the way that Amos arranged the unit, which, though it starts at verse 1 in a nice and tidy way, it does not match the chapter divisions. The way Amos divided this up, this section only goes through verse 17. This particular section that I read,
is a chiasm, which I’ll explain in a minute, for those of you who have not heard of that before. It’s a chiasm, and it’s a literary unit that marks off what Amos is up to. So given what Amos does elsewhere in this book, it’s not surprising that it’s a seven-fold breakout. So let’s look at this. The structure of the text. How do we know? What is a chiasm, and how do we know? If you took an English comp class, you know that you were taught to put your thesis statement,
early on, and then you unpack and develop the thesis statement. We say what we are wanting the main point to be right at the front end, and then we develop that. That’s how we think in the West. In the ancient Near East, for example, in the book of Habakkuk, the way you identified the most important element, the thesis statement, is you put it at the hinge of a chiasm. So imagine folding a piece of paper in two, and then the first three points go down to
the fold in the paper, and right on the fold of the paper is the most important point, and then you back out again, so it’s A, B, C, and then D on the fold, and then C, B, A on the other side of the paper. That’s a chiasm. And this section of Amos is a chiasm, which I’ll explain in just a moment, but it’s really interesting. So for example, in the book of Habakkuk, the whole book of Habakkuk is a chiasm, and the hinge of the chiasm is the just shall live by faith, and that’s the hinge
of the chiasm in Habakkuk. And then in the book of Romans, Paul does it in our way, in the first chapter of Romans, he quotes Habakkuk, and he states the just shall live by faith in the first chapter, and then he develops that whole theme throughout the rest of the book of Romans. So it’s just simply different ways of organizing a text, and different ways of pointing to what is the most important thing. So here, in this section, we have, and he’s done this before, in 3.1 and 4.1,
begins the same way, begins with the same word that he has done previously. And this is a word that the rebellious house of Israel needs to hear. So in verses 1 through 3, it’s a lamentation over the fall of Israel. It’s a lamentation over the fall of Israel. And I’m going to make this simpler by jumping down to verses 16 and 17, which is a coming lamentation over Israel. 16 and 17. So 1 through 3, a lamentation over Israel,
16 and 17, a lamentation over Israel. B would be a call for repentance. That’s verses 4 through the first half of 6. Amos tells Israel to seek and to live. And he uses seven verbs in that exhortation. Amos likes the number 7. He uses seven verbs in that exhortation, seek and live. Seek and live. So that’s the call to repentance in verses 4 through the first part of 6. In verses 14 and 15,
surprise, Amos tells Israel to seek and to live. And again, he uses seven verbs. He uses seven verbs in 4 through 6, and he uses seven verbs in 14 and 15, and the message is the same. Seek the Lord, seek Yahweh, and live. And then the third section, the third point, is condemnation of injustice. That’s the second part of verse 6 into verse 7. And then matching that would be, again, surprise,
condemnation of injustice, condemnation of injustice. Another way of thinking this, it would be not sound rhymes, like modern poets would, well, actually, classical poets, modern poets don’t do anything, but in classical poets, the poetry would scan, and oftentimes it would rhyme. What a chiasm does is thought rhymes. It’s a concept rhyme. So condemnation of injustice, condemnation of injustice.
And then we get to the hinge of the section, which is praise to Yahweh. Yahweh, Jehovah, is his name. And then on either side of this statement is a hymn to God’s power, verses 8 and 9. A hymn to God’s power. Yahweh is supreme. Yahweh is his name. And then more of a hymn to God’s power. So that’s the chiasm. That’s the literary unit.
That’s the modern chapter and verse markings, however helpful they are, and they are helpful, are a modern development. It was after the age of printing, basically. At least one reformed guy, an early printer, did the versification while on horseback, fleeing from persecution. And sometimes it shows.
They divided here. Well, that doesn’t mean that there were no principles of organizing the text prior to chapter and verse markings. And this is a good example. So let’s summarize the text. So the center of this word is the nature and character of God. Hear the lamentation, O Israel, verse 1. The virgin Israel is fallen, verse 2. Their fate would be terrible, a reverse decimation, verse 3.
So, after a battle in the ancient world, if you executed a tenth of their army, executed a tenth of the prisoners, that would be a decimation. You took out one tenth. This is a reverse decimation, meaning you leave one tenth. So, their fate would be terrible, a reverse decimation, verse 3. So, judgment is coming on Israel. God’s appeal to Israel, and Israel here is the northern king,
Amos is prophesying after the division of the kingdom. So, ancient Israel under Saul and David and Solomon was a unit, and then when Israel had their civil strife and split into two, there’s the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. This is a prophecy against the northern kingdom of Israel. So, God’s appeal to Israel is very simple. Seek God and live. Seek God and live.
Avoid God, run away from God and die. Seek God and live. Verse 4. The corollary also follows. If Israel seeks God, then they will not seek Bethel, Gilgal, or Beersheba. Verse 5. These were idolatrous centers where idols were established. So, seeking God means forsaking idols. You can’t do it all. You can’t just worship everybody. You have to be exclusive in your devotion to the true and living God.
A condemning fire is coming, verse 6, and is going to fall on those who pervert justice in the courts, verse 7. In the Ten Commandments, where it says you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, the principal meaning of that
it has to do with perjury. It has to do with corrupting the courts. Of course, it extends out to day-to-day living. We’re not to lie to each other in day-to-day living either, but the centerpiece is protect the courts. You want integrity in the halls of justice, which Israel did not have, and this is why the condemnation is coming. It’s going to fall on those who pervert justice in the courts, verse 7. So the first part of the hymn, we’re coming up to the hinge of the chiasm.
And it mentions the Pleiades and Orion. And God is the God of creation. God is the God of creation, verse 8. Yahweh is His name. That’s the second part of 8. That’s the cash payout there. Yahweh is His name. And then the second part of the hymn is to the God who strengthens the victim, verse 9. So God is the creator God. Yahweh is His name.
And God stands up for the victim, for the downtrodden, for the widow, for the orphan, for the people who are abused by the corruption of the courts. When the courts are corrupted, then the fat cats start getting away on everything. And they don’t care about anybody. They don’t care who they walk on. And so Yahweh is His name. He is the God of creation. And He is the God of the downtrodden. So Amos then condemns the injustices of those justices who hate the prophet and the preacher.
Because they want to sin with a free hand. Verse 10. People don’t like it when sin is rebuked. When sin is confronted. Everybody says that they like a church without hypocrites in it. You’ve probably heard this from many non-believers. I can’t go to church. There’s too many hypocrites there. Well, the problem is if there’s a hypocrite between you and God, then the hypocrite is closer to God than you are. That’s the first problem.
If there’s a hypocrite between you and God, you have to ask yourself some basic questions. Does God approve of these hypocrites? No. All the way through the Bible. One of Jesus’ favorite sayings is, woe unto you, Pharisees, scribes, hypocrites. Woe unto you. So hypocrisy is not something that God tolerates, and it makes no sense at all to reject real money because you don’t like counterfeit money. That’s simply joining
up with the counterfeiters. So you can tell when people say the church is full of hypocrites, but then what do people say about churches that discipline hypocrites? Judgmental Pharisees think they’re better than everybody else. So you can’t win for losing. But it doesn’t matter because if you obey the Bible, if you do what God says, what is that? Seek God and live. This is the way of life. This is the way to go. So these people hate the
prophet and the preacher because they want to sin with a free hand. Verse 10, they walk all over the poor, but God sees it. Verse 11, they walk all over the poor, but God sees it and there will be justice. They rip off the poor in court, but God knows it. Verse 12, and because they don’t like being rebuked, they charge the prudent with hate and they charge the prudent with thought crimes if they say anything about it. Verse 13, so if you rebuke someone who is abusing the poor, they’ve already abandoned
the path of justice and truth and righteousness. So nothing is preventing them from trying to flip the script and say that you’re the problem. So if you say, really, you ought not to be treating the poor this way, they’re going to say that you’re the one who’s actually abusing the poor. You’re guilty of hate crimes because you rebuked me. That doesn’t follow. So Amos returns to his call for repentance. Seek good and live. This is the theme throughout the passage. Seek good and live. Verse 14, hate evil.
And love good. Hate evil and love good. I was just talking at breakfast. My grandma was the mother of six boys. My father was the number two of six boys. And one of my grandma’s sayings that her kids put on a calendar once was, be good. Don’t be like other boys. Be good. That’s right. Hate evil and love what is good. Verse 15, establish justice in the gate, and perhaps God will
relent with his coming judgment. Verse 15, establish justice in the gate, and perhaps God is going to relent. But that’s not going to happen, Amos knows, and so lamentation is coming. Verses 16 and 17, he laments at the beginning for the current conditions, and then he laments for the fact that he knows, despite the urging of repentance, despite the fact that he’s calling for repentance, he knows that they’re not going to repent, and so he says lamentation is coming. So the theme of Amos is not necessarily
oppression of the poor by the rich in modern categories. In other words, this is not a Marxist analysis. This is not a class warfare thing where the rich are automatically evil and the poor are automatically good. All the oppressed in Samaria, which is the capital city of the northern kingdom of Israel, all the oppressed in Samaria who are being mistreated by these fat cat scoundrels are also going to be destroyed by the Assyrians.
The theme of this book is not the oppression of the poor by the rich. It is the oppression of the poor by the fat cat false worshippers, fat cat idolaters, people who say that they serve Yahweh but who do not.
The two Hebrew words for exile both have G and L at their root, just like Gilgal. So the word for exile, the two words for exile have G and L as their root and Gilgal does. So Amos is punning on their judgment. Amos is punning on their judgment. Now I know it’s commonplace among sophisticated Americans and Englishmen to say that they think punning is the lowest form of humor. They despise punning.
And for people who are scripturally astute, that’s really unfortunate. Because the Bible puns all the time. And this is an example. So he’s punning on their judgment. And Bethel, the house of God, is rejected as Beth-Avon, house of worthless idolatry. So the issue is, who are you going to worship? Who is your God? Is your God the living God? Or is your God a construct? Now you can tell easily that if you’re worshiping a construct,
if you carve it out of stone or if you carve it out of wood and you bow down to a thing. That’s gross idolatry. But constructs can be made out of mental activity. You can invent a God more to your liking. You can invent a God who is the God of pussy willows and the God of fluffy clouds and unicorns and invent a God and bow down to that God. But it’s an idol, just the same. And so the seek God and live,
it happens all the way through this passage, is seek the true God. Seek the actual God. Seek the God who is the living triune God, not the God that we would have preferred to have. We are a sinful people. We’re a mess. And the God that we would create would be a God after our own image. We would create a God who is unholy like we are, who budgets for our unholiness. The true God forgives our unholiness, which is a very different thing.
He’s not a God of let boys be boys. He’s not a God of sloppy tolerance. He’s a God of grace and forgiveness. Now, we come back to this theme of seek and live. Seek and live. God invites Israel to seek Him and live. You’ve heard that a number of times. Verse 4, seek and live. The flip side of this is found in the next verse. Seek idols and die. Seek God and live or seek idols and die.
like what you worship. You become like what you worship. In Psalm 115, it says the idols, idolaters, worship gods that have eyes but see not, ears but they hear not, noses but they smell not. And then he says, those that worship them become like unto them. You become like what you worship. If you worship deaf, dumb, and blind idols, you become deaf, dumb, and blind. If you worship cruel idols, you become cruel.
If you worship idols of lust and lasciviousness, you become more and more lustful. You become like what you worship. And the same thing is true about true worship of the true God. You become like what you worship. We’re told in John that when we finally see Him, when the Lord comes, and we finally see Him, we will become like Him because we will see Him as He is. That’s at the second coming. But we’re also told in Corinthians that we seek the Lord continually, week to week, with unveiled face as we worship the Lord.
We are being transformed from one degree of glory to another. So if we worship the God of glory, we are becoming like what we worship. We’re being transformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ. If you worship idols, you become more and more like those idols. If you worship the true and living God, you become more and more like a human being. So worship idols, seek idols and die. Seek the right God. Now here’s a tricksy thing. If you seek the right God,
under the wrong golden and calf-like forms, you’re also going to die. There are people who say, I’m worshiping the true God. Like when Aaron was manipulated into making the golden calf at the base of the mountain, he proclaimed a festival to Yahweh. But there was this golden calf, which Moses disapproved of. When Moses came down, Moses was furious. But Aaron thought you could sort of split the difference. We can worship Jehovah, we can worship Yahweh, but still have the golden calf.
No, no. If you worship the true God under His right name, but everything about it is wrong, everything about it is idolatrous, then you die as well. So the exhortation is repeated again. Seek the Lord and live. Seek the Lord and live. Verse 6. This is also emphasized by the chiasm. Seek good, not evil, that you might live in verse 14. Now let’s apply this to America. Apply this to where we live.
We’re not in Israel. We’re not in Judah. We’re not in the time of Amos. But these issues are not irrelevant to us. We are in a time where this applies straight across. If America is to be pulled back from our idolatrous slow motion disaster that we are currently in, it’s like watching a helicopter land sideways in slow motion. That’s the situation we’re currently in.
If we want God’s mercy to be extended to us, then we need to seek Him so that we might live. That’s the message. Seek God. Seek God. Turn to Him. And you see this pattern throughout all Scripture. The Jews fell away from the Lord. He sends Moabites or Amalekites or Philistines to afflict them. And they finally get to the point where they have enough of that. And then it says, and they cried out to the Lord.
So this is what it means to seek the Lord. We seek the Lord by crying out to Him, saying, Lord, we cannot extricate ourselves from the jam that we got ourselves in. We cannot recover all the things that we threw away. We cannot rebuild all the things that we tore down. We are not able to save ourselves. We can’t save ourselves. And that’s the first step.
That’s not how it works. So we need to seek Him out. We need to seek the Lord, cry out to the Lord in order that we might live. And it will not be sufficient if all Americans seek the Lord in the cubby holes of their own hearts while refusing to admit publicly what they are doing. We have to be public Christians. We need to be
public. Now, what do I, this is, there’s an important angle on this. The secularists don’t like us being Christians in public. They disapprove of that. And we would say that Jesus was crucified where? In public. He was crucified in public. They put a sign over him on the cross in three different languages. Because
all the people passing by needed to read that sign. Crucifixions were performed in public. Jesus died for your sins and for mine in public. Jesus died for all of our sins in public. He was then buried and then he rose again from the dead in public. Paul tells Agrippa a number of years later when Paul is giving his testimony to Agrippa, he said, Agrippa, you know about these things. I know you do.
These things were not done in a corner, he says. Jesus appeared to over 500 people after his resurrection. Jesus appeared to people for almost a month and a half after his resurrection. Jesus rose from the dead, in other words, in public. He rose from the dead in public. God, in his great mercy, arranged for the rulers of this age, Paul says, if the rulers of this age had known what they were doing, they would not have crucified.
They wouldn’t have done it if they’d known what was going to happen. What was going to happen is their kingdom, their realm, all the things that they were doing were going to be torn down and torn down by their own action of crucifying Jesus in public. And so consequently, if they don’t want us testifying to Christ in public, singing psalms to him in public, witnessing to him in public, they should have thought of that before they crucified him there.
Adherence of a mystery religion. This is not something that we treasure behind our eyes and between our ears. And if we keep it there, everybody will leave us alone. They’ll say that they’ll leave us alone. They’ll say, keep it private and we’ll leave you alone. Well, we’re private in this room. Are they leaving us alone? No, no. It is not tolerable for them, for us to be doing what we’re doing.
We have to, not because we’re hardened and cruel, but in the Holy Spirit, we have to simply not care. Simply not care. Why? Because we’re seeking God that we might live. Not only that, but we’re seeking God so that they might live. The repentance that God wants to grant to this country is a repentance that’s going to be a blessing to people who are currently on the other side.
It will touch those who are currently in opposition, and that is up to God. So, hate and love. That’s another theme in this. The perverted justices that govern our court system hate any kind of challenge in the gate. That’s verse 10. And so the prudent are threatened and kept in check. Verse 13. If you want to testify against them, then the screws are brought to bear.
I can testify directly that there are different court cases and different challenges and different situations where people were going to testify, they were going to go to court, and pressure points were brought to bear. No, you’re not. Personal threats. We are a corrupt people. We’re not squeaky clean and nice. We need to acknowledge that we are a sinful people and we have corrupted the courts of justice. The prudent really are threatened.
Some of them lose their lives. This is described as an evil time. And so the prudent are stirred up. Don’t let them dictate to you what you can say. Seek good, not evil. Verse 14. And if you do, then God will be with you. God will be with you. That means there’s nothing to fear, not even a Canadian Human Rights Commission.
Whoa, you’re kind of up there. When God is with you, you are charged to hate evil and love the good, and to do so outside the recesses of your heart. You are to be a Christian in public. That doesn’t mean you’re to be obnoxious in public, obnoxious with your faith in public, but you’re to simply be a Christian in public. We are charged to hate evil in the court system and to love good in the court system. In the gate, that’s verse 15.
So ancient courts were held behind the city gates and in rooms and alcoves in the region of the gate. That was the seat of government. So when it says in Proverbs that the Proverbs 31, her family praises her in the gates. Her name comes up at city council meetings. Her name comes up. Man, that’s quite a woman. So here’s the hinge. Yahweh is his name. Yahweh is his name. Although Amos is concerned with the false witness established
in the northern kingdom, scripture elsewhere addresses the issue of iniquity trying to coexist with true worship. So the problem of Bethel and Dan, which is where golden calves were erected, is not solved simply by heading south to Jerusalem. Remember the Lord Jesus fiercely denounced the worship that was occurring there at the true temple. So sinners can corrupt anything. Sinners can corrupt orthodoxy. They can corrupt true
words. They can corrupt false words, making them even falser. Sinners can really get their fingerprints on anything. Reformation is not accomplished in that way. True worship, true reformation, true revival is what occurs when we come to worship God with all the externals established in true obedience and all the internals lined up to match. It’s not just having the externals right, and it’s not about having the internals right.
It’s having the externals and the internals lined up. So we just had a baptism this morning. What does baptism point to? Baptism points to Jesus. Baptism doesn’t point to the heart of the person being baptized. It points to Jesus. Christian baptism always points to Christ. And so when the baptism points to Christ objectively, that places a covenantal obligation on the one baptized to have their life,
and heart, and mind point the same direction that their baptism does, away from themselves, away from me. So this is liberation from me. The gospel is liberation from the essential problem of the world, which would be me. There was an essay contest back in Chesterton’s career. There was an essay collection that was being gathered by one of the newspaper or periodical,
to submit an essay, and they asked a bunch of different writers, to submit an essay on what was wrong with the world. That was the topic, the assigned topic. What is wrong with the world? And Chesterton submitted a two-word essay. He said, I am. What’s wrong with the world? I am. Well, what happens in real revival is that we don’t ask God to come down and fix the other guy.
Effectively, we know that there are problems out there. But I’m mindful there’s one of my favorite books written by a cheery old unbeliever, cheery old reprobate, Ambrose Pierce, The Devil’s Dictionary. In The Devil’s Dictionary, he has a definition, kind of an exquisite definition of a Christian. He said, Christian, noun, someone who believes the New Testament is a divinely inspired book, admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
And we have to simply be done with that, done with that. Lord, change me. Lord, change me first. That’s true worship, true reformation. So if you, in the part of the service where you kneel and confess your sins, you should be confessing your own sins, not other people’s sins. You can confess other people’s sins all day, and your joy doesn’t return. You confess your own sins. And this is what happens when reformation takes root.
We deal with our own issues first. So all the internals line up with the externals. Clean the inside of the cup, the Lord said. But he did not say that the outside was irrelevant. Jesus said, hypocrites, clean the outside of the cup and leave the inside corrupt. Jesus said, clean the inside. And he doesn’t say clean the inside and let the outside be dirty. He says, clean the inside and then the outside will be clean also. And so the thing that you want is a coherence,
between the inside of the cup and the outside of the cup and what your baptism says and what the preacher said. We want everything to point the same direction, which is to the Lord Jesus Christ. So, who is the Lord that we may worship Him? He is not to be trifled with. The God of the Bible, as one writer said, is no buttercup. The God of the Bible is the God of thunder. He’s the God of justice. He’s the God of holiness. But He’s also the God of mercy.
There’s more grace in God than there is sin in you. There’s more grace in God than there is sin in you. And the only thing that must happen is you must apply to Him for it. You must look to Him for it. I know you can say, Lord, I heard the preacher say there’s more grace in you than there is sin in me, and I’ve got a lot of sin, and I’m looking to you to deal with my sin. And so,
the God of the Bible is not to be trifled with, and he can’t be bribed, he can’t be flattered, he can’t none of that, and he can’t be tied up with worthless interpretations of the First Amendment, or bottom line profit and loss statements, or progressive tax policies. He is the Lord. He spoke the seven stars of the Pleiades into existence, and he holds Orion in the palm of his hand, and out there in the galaxies, they’ve never even heard of Justice Jackson.
These things fill up our horizon. We think, oh, that’s an important person. Everybody that we think is important breathes through their nose. We are all midges in a sunbeam. God is the God of the heavens. He is the God of all, and God has no problems. Have you thought about that?
And so, we worship the God of galaxies. We worship the God of day and night. We worship the God of oceans and rain. And we worship the God who rises up to defend the downcast. And we worship the God who comes into individual lives to scrub all the sin away. That’s the God we worship. That’s the whole point of the Christian faith, is basically new hearts, new lives,
and lawless deeds I will remember no more. Father in God, we thank you for your goodness to us. We thank you for this word. We thank you for the privilege that we have of gathering around this word. I pray that as we meditate on these things, as we think about them, as we look for places and ways to apply them, I pray that your Holy Spirit would guide our thoughts, guide our meditations, guide our hand as we would seek to do this right. And we know that we can’t do it right
your grace. So we appeal to that grace now.