Good Morning Beloved,
I am so thankful for all of you who join us today
It is my prayer, that you will be blessed by today's message
Heavenly Father,
Thank You for Your Word today
thank You for granting me, who is unworthy
the honor and privilege of sharing with each
of those You have entrusted me with today
Father, I pray that our ears be opened
that we may all receive Your message for us
that we would all take it to heart and apply it
to our own lives, our interactions with others
both here and in the world around us
That we would more boldly proclaim Your truths
to a world unbelieving, that they would listen
and come in true repentance, receive Your Son
Jesus Christ, as their Savior
All for Your glory
In Jesus' name these things we pray
Amen
"Therefore, any one of you who judges is without excuse. For when you judge another, you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the same things. We know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is based on the truth. Do you really think—anyone of you who judges those who do such things yet do the same—that you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you despise the riches of His kindness, restraint, and patience, not recognizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? But because of your hardness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment is revealed. He will repay each one according to his works: eternal life to those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality; but wrath and indignation to those who are self-seeking and disobey the truth but are obeying unrighteousness; affliction and distress for every human being who does evil, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek; but glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does what is good, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. There is no favoritism with God.
All those who sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all those who sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For the hearers of the law are not righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be declared righteous. So, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, instinctively do what the law demands, they are a law to themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. Their consciences confirm this. Their competing thoughts will either accuse or excuse them on the day when God judges what people have kept secret, according to my gospel through Christ Jesus."
Romans 2:1-16
Today's Message: Slave or Sinner - Part 3
Beloved, I entrust that each of you took the time to meditate
on our final word last time, taking it not only to heart, but that you allowed it to seep deep within you, to change you, that we would
all strive to become a better people, a people more like Christ
Who is to be our example, by the demonstration of His own life
as recorded in the Scriptures
As we continue today in our study of the book of Romans chapter 2, let us not forget what we already learned, but build upon that foundation today
Last time, we discussed God's goodness, patience, mercy and long suffering toward us.
Today, I continue making some points in regard to that, and I hope, to continue in teaching the additional verses in our text, Romans 2:1-16.
Let's get started...
In the Hebrew term, it would say that God is slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. And this is the riches in which provides. It isn’t just goodness and forbearance and long suffering, it’s goodness and forbearance and long suffering at its epitome, it is the riches of those things. Things we all enjoy, not just the shallow but in the fullest. We all experience each of these things, in the fullest, everyday.
This is what the old theologians used to call "common grace." It comes under the theological term of providence. In other words, God is just good and He pours out His goodness and He withholds His judgment and He does it for a long period of time.
This brings to mind, a number of passages in the Psalms. The first we find in Psalm 52. Psalm 52, verse 1, I'll read it to you.
"Why brag about evil, you hero! God’s faithful love is constant."
And then we have in Psalm 107:8, "Let them give thanks to the Lord for His faithful love and His wonderful works for all humanity."
Next is Psalm 145:8-9, "The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and great in faithful love. The Lord is good to everyone; His compassion rests on all He has made."
Do you know what is absolutely appalling about this? It is that most people really do not see God as being good. In fact, many people wonder how God can be so cruel to allow certain things to happen, am I right? "How can God allow that?" or "How can God allow this?" I have lost count, just considering this current crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic.
Allow me to give you the answer to that question. The goodness of God is nowhere more clearly demonstrated than that when man commits sin, think about that. I know, some of you are likely, thinking, "How is that so?" Well, think it, not one of us has fallen over dead, right on the spot, each time we've ever sinned! Well, have we? Of course not, or we wouldn't be gathered here today, or again. You see, God had every reason at the fall of humanity to wipe out the human race, every reason He would ever need. And allow me to take that a step further, He has the same exact reason every single time you or I ever commit even one sin, regardless of how insignificant we might perceive it to be. Beloved, it is only, only by His goodness and His forbearance and His long suffering that allows any one of us take another single breath. In other words, it’s mercy rejoicing against judgment.
Just look at what Scripture says, all throughout Scripture, it points to God's goodness and mercy upon us, His creation. God was especially good to Israel. He is, after all, the God of patience. But was He also not good to the pagans? Well, wasn’t He? And in the days of Noah? I mean, think about, God waited 120 years for them to repent. God has been so patient with the nations, with all of humanity. In the time of their ignorance, He overlooked. In fact, He was so patient with Israel and with Judah, He waited for centuries and centuries, literally seven, eight hundred years before He took them into the Babylonian captivity. And we do not consider that to be patient? Are you kidding? Which one of us, would be willing to wait one fourth of that?
Beloved, God is still wonderfully patient with all of us today. You look around the world today and people are sinning, like never before, and at an accelerated rate. In our world today, the divine law of our blessed God is trampled underfoot, God Himself is openly despised, His name is blasphemed, and it is amazing that He doesn’t instantaneously strike dead every person that does that. When you hear someone blaspheme the name of God and then, they continue to take yet another breath, that is the goodness of God. Does He quickly cut them down? Right then and there? And why doesn’t He cut you down and me down when we sin? Why? Yet, He doesn't does He? No! He does not!
And let's face it, we all know that these things are certainly within His ability and His range of power, that all goes without saying, yet He chooses not to. Why? In spite of our constant rebellion, He continues to show us, His goodness. Demonstrating His mercies, day after day, after day. Why doesn’t He simply cause the earth to just open up and swallow us deep within it's bowel? And, what about apostate Christian, those who have renounced their faith? What about all the liberal minded Christian's we see today and the apostates? What about their tolerance for every form of evil? Not only a tolerance, but they applaud it? How can God allow that to go on? Why does the righteous wrath of heaven not consume them?
The only answer is, because, as Romans 9:22 it says, "And what if God, desiring to display His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience objects of wrath ready for destruction?"
Listen, and pay close attention and let this settle in your mind because I'm going to show you the answer to this question. If you have ever thought, even for one moment that God is unjust, you simply reveal how easy it is to learn to abuse the goodness of God, and allow me show to you why. The goodness of God, back to verse 4, is designed to lead men to repentance. It is designed to cause them to turn from sin to Him. It is designed to cause men who are filled with evil to long for God and His goodness. It is designed to make them thankful, that He didn’t slay them in wrath and turn toward Him with gratitude.
Look, if you and I really realized what we deserve every day we are alive, every breath we take, we would quickly be upon our knees, thanking God, that He didn’t strike us down the moment we chose, and yes, it's a choice, every one of us makes, to sin against Him. You see, God’s goodness and God’s patience calls us to repentance, to thankful and grateful hearts, and yet we so often, so very often every one of us, fails to do that.
So just allow me to make clear, for some of you, who may not know exactly what repentance means.
It simply means to turn away from sin and turn toward God, to turn away from what we’re doing to Him, and to do that because we recognize our sin and we recognize what we deserve and we know we should be punished, that we should die, and when He doesn’t take our life for it, but instead, He allows us to live, we should humbly turn toward Him, in utter gratitude. But do we do that? Does humanity do that? Instead, they despise God’s goodness, blaspheming His name and before you start putting the blame somewhere else, we can be guilty of the same thing that is characteristic of an unregenerate but religious person.
One commentator has said that almost everyone has, and I am quoting this here "a vague and undefined hope of impunity and a kind of feeling that this can’t happen to me." We just have this feeling that everything is going to be okay in our case, we are generally good. Sure, we may mess up a little here and there BUT we read God's Word, we go to church. We help others, we say and do, for the most part, all the right things, is that not what most Christians believe? Well, that was exactly the problem with the Jews. They also believed they were exempt from the judgment of God, and many people, in fact, most people today, still believe that.
But it's just not what the Word of God teaches! Are we that shallow minded, that even when it's right in front of our faces, we still believe we are somehow, exempt from His judgement? Beloved, we are only fooling ourselves! We must stop fooling ourselves, the time is upon us all when Christ will return and judge both the righteous and the unrighteous.
Listen, most of the people in our world don’t believe God’s going to judge them, they don’t believe that for even a minute. And they just load up on all of God’s goodness and all of God’s providence and they take in, with all the pleasures of life and all the love and the wonder of love and of children and parents and friends and a partner in life and the beauty and the fun and the pleasure and all of the delicacies of life that God gives, and they just take it all in, the beauty, the warmth, the emotions, and it’s all mercy that they don’t die every breath they take.
But they never think about that, do we? And that is why this is such an incredible sin to be unthankful, you see. That’s why in chapter 1 when it condemns the heathen, it condemns him for failing to glorify God and neither were they what? Thankful. Heine, the philosopher, was once quoted as saying, when confronted with his sin, "God will forgive me. After all, it’s His trade." Beloved, I am deeply afraid many of us fall into that category. We go right, on, from one sin into another sin, because we’re so used to mercy that we just figure we’ll get it again. So the Jews, and like all the rest, we assume His mercy and we go on sinning. We assume God’s grace and we go on sinning. We assume God’s kindness and goodness and patience and long suffering and keep right on sinning, and then we just stomped all over God’s goodness with rebellion, our sin! Do you not get this? Do any of us?
But goodness despised leads to where? Right to the end of goodness and ultimate judgment, just look at verse 5 and it talks about a hard and impenitent heart piling up wrath to be revealed on the day of wrath, that special day when righteous judgment from God is revealed. The kind of people who are like this are people who don’t see God’s nature as loving and good and kind. They just see their own nature as deserving. "Well, I’m not so bad. So I'm not terribly worried." I mean what we don’t say and what we need to say is, "O God, thank You, Thank You for another day of life. Thank You for a partner that I love. Thank You for what You’ve done. Thank You for not taking my life and slaying me in my sin." We just take it all for granted and then we get the idea that we’re just getting what we deserve, that we’re somehow not half bad. That is delusional.
Today, there is a sick cult which has arisen in contemporary evangelical Christianity. One is built around self, and people talk about self-image and self-esteem and self-worth and self-value, and it is nothing but humanistic worldliness. You have no worth or value as a self, as a filthy, corrupt, immoral sinner, and the whole idea of that concept has taken evangelicalism and twisted it from a God-centered perspective to a man oriented self-centered perspective, and salvation in Christianity is all seen from the viewpoint of what can God do for me? And sin is always seen as to how it affects man, not how it affects God. God is flawless and perfect. You and I are selfists, indulging ourselves in God’s mercy, and this is a horrifying mistake. The only reason you can take even one breath, one single breath or that I am even permitted to breathe one more breath is because God is merciful, and if you and I forget that and tread on that mercy, such ingratitude is so severe. How can we read the Scriptures and not see this? God doesn't owe us anything! It's only because of His loving kindness and gentle mercies we are still alive.
I want to speak now to this issue because it opens up one of the great truths of Scripture, and I want to give you a little Scripture lesson that will help you fill out your theology at this point. Now, think with me now, very important. People see God as unjust. You know, if somebody, if something comes into your life, your husband dies, your wife dies, your kids are injured, somebody you know gets a disease, your thought is, "Well, God, that’s so unfair." Am I right? "How can You do that, to me, of all people, God?" And you have to work your way through those kind of thoughts. But you know what that is, that’s your rotten old sin principle operating. "I mean how can you do that, God?"
"I mean how can I be without a job?" or "How can I have all these kind of problems?" or "Why me? What have I ever done to You? This is just not fair." And so you tend to question God’s love for you and you tend to question God’s actions, and it’s an incredible turn-around because God is so merciful and so kind and yet men despise that very kindness, and when something goes eschew in their life, they begin to accuse God of being unfair or unjust. How incredibly absurd. God Is good, fair and just. Yet look how we all have abused His goodness and mercy, all of us. We tend to think He owes us something more than He has already given us. Our life.
OK, so we’re in the New Testament. We’re experiencing God’s goodness. We’re experiencing God’s grace, God’s mercy, and then we go back to the Old Testament. As we begin reading the Old Testament, we read about all these amazing things that God does. He turns Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt because she looked backwards. I know, some of you say, "Oh, that poor lady. I mean the whole place is burning up. I mean it’s so hard to resist the peek. I mean it isn’t a mortal sin, then she just went, zap, right out of existence. I mean it kind of sounds arbitrary, right?" I mean it's like "why that?" And we say, "What kind of a God does this cruel and almost kind of punishment?"
Then He tells Abraham, who was obviously kind of special to Him, to go and burn up his son in a sacrifice to Him, and then He sends a bunch of snakes in to bite all the Israelites, and then He caused the ground to open and swallow those men up, and then He sends forth fire from His prophet Elijah and it burned up a hundred people, I mean, they’re just pagan people, they're going about their business and whoosh, in a blaze, they’re gone. And then some people were mocking Elisha, a bunch of little kids, calling him names, and a bear came out and ripped up 40 of them. You might say, "What kind of a God even does this? What kind of capricious arbitrary act, why all those little kids? I mean who doesn't know that little kids are bound to sort of make fun of people, every now and then." And yet you have other people like David whose lives are a hot mess and Solomon who has got more wives than you could even count and he just goes along through life, and Lot’s wife goes, I mean what kind of a God is this?
Then the Scripture teaches that God hardens Pharaoh’s heart and kills his firstborn for having a hard heart. Oh, and what about when He called for the extermination of every Canaanite, kill every man, every woman? Doesn’t make sense. And He even said, "Happy shall be he who takes your little ones and dashes them against a rock." Take babies and hit them on a rock? I mean, what kind of a God is this?
Can you see it, all this made some people so distressed that they just have to say, "Well, it’s not the same God. I mean it just cannot be the same God. It’s impossible." Lord Platt, who in writing in the London Times said, "Perhaps now that it is written in a language all can understand, the Old Testament will be seen for what it is, an obscene chronicle of man’s cruelty to man or worse perhaps, his cruelty to woman and of man’s selfishness and cupidity backed up by his appeal to his God, a horror story if ever there was one. It is to be hoped that it will at last be proscribed as totally inappropriate to the ethical instruction of school children," end quote. We can’t handle that book. It’s too grossly intolerable for us today. So, we just want to skip it, and many claim it's invalid now, so let's only talk about the New Testament.
Now, let's take a look at II Samuel chapter 6, and I’ll share with you a few more illustrations. The Ark of the Covenant is being brought back to the children of Israel, and what a great day this is. After all, it’s been in the country of the Philistines for some months, and now they’re going to get the Ark of the Covenant back, so what a great time it is. They’re bringing back that which represents the presence of God in their midst. And, you know, whenever the Ark of the Covenant was moved the Kohathites had to move it, and they were a part of the Levitical order. But the Kohathites were trained from their youth to transport the Ark. So they knew how to do it. They were actually trained to do it. God had told them never is anyone ever to touch it. There were big rings on the side. They had poles to run through those rings. They would carry it with the poles, never to touch the Ark. They were trained all their life to do that.
And so then in verse 3 says when they went to move it, "They set the Ark of God on a new cart." God did not want His Ark on a cart, even on a new cart. This was a flippant move. This was a human decision, and God didn't like it. This was disobedient to His instruction. And so they’re bopping along on the cart and everybody’s happy and they’re playing instruments, in verse 5, and harps and psalteries and timbrels and cornets. And they came to Nachon’s threshing floor, which is just a geographical point in the little trip, and the thing must have hit a little mud hole or a chuck hole and the cart went into a jolt and the Ark started to move. And Uzzah, he was a Kohathite, he was in charge of this, he just put his hand out to steady the Ark, I mean he didn’t want it to be defiled by hitting the ground, but what he didn’t know was that the ground wasn’t defiled, but the human race was. Nothing was wrong with the ground. The problem was and always has been man. Dirt never fell, man did.
So when he touched the Ark, he was dead on the spot. And I know, you're going to say, "Well, that poor fella, I mean he doesn’t go out and commit adultery, he doesn’t have 800 wives, he just goes and he’s out of existence, just like that, that fast." But the problem was, it was a careless and arrogant sin, which came about because he was not obedient to the Word of God.
So then, now in Leviticus chapter 10. Aaron had two sons. Oh, he was so proud of those two boys, Nadab and Abihu. Any father would be, and you know what? They were going to be priests. What a great thing. They were going to be priests, and guess what day this was, Leviticus 10, get this, this was their ordination. I remember the day I was ordained, it's something that I will never forget. I know that my grandmother who, by the way, has long gone to be with the Lord, it would have been kind of special for her, because she had prayed that the Lord would guide her family, and it was hard for her to release us to God, to do as was His will. I suppose she kind of felt like many mothers and grandmothers still, no one can worry and care for my family like I can. I hope she's up there smiling down on that great day when I was ordained. I know it was a wonderful day for me especially, I remember when I was quite young, going to church, thinking to myself, I might have actually told some people when I was a little older, I'm sure I did, but I wanted to be up there talking about God.
I thought, that the preacher must have had a super special relationship with God to know all that, like they were, you know, best friends, who tell each other everything, I think I was like 5 or so years old.
It seems like so long ago, it actually was a pretty long time ago.
Well, this was that kind of day for Aaron. His two boys were ordained to the priesthood, first day, and they went in there and they took the censer that the priest used and they put fire in and they put incense in and then they offered strange fire before the Lord, which He commanded them not. They messed around. They were so excited about being a priest that they just decided to take some liberties, and they went in there and did some thing that was not what they were supposed to do, and there went out fire from the Lord and it completely devoured them and they died, right before the Lord. I mean, can you just imagine Aaron? God, these are just young boys, I mean they were so excited about what they were doing and this was their ordination and now, they’re dead, dead! You just burned them up. You didn't even give them a warning, I mean couldn’t You have said to them, "Excuse me, boys, now, I know you’re kind of new at this whole ministry thing, but you’re going to have to get rid of that kind of blatant flippancy and do things right," but nope, just a whoosh and they’re gone, and there are so many people in Israel who are evil and yet, they’re still alive.
Oh, and have you ever asked yourself about the Great Flood? Well, have you just ever kind of questioned, "How could God literally just drown the whole world?" I mean, doesn't that seem like kind of a cruel and unusual punishment to you? And then if you study the Old Testament further, you will find that there are nearly 35 sins for which God prescribed the death penalty, such as hitting your parents, yes, that’s right, God said that. Or even cursing them, you know, that mumbling that most of you younger kids do under your breath, a curse to your parents, "Oh man, you're so unfair! I hate you!" stuff. Well, guess what? Death penalty!! Yep dead, D.E.A.D. So, just go ahead and think about that next time your mumbling stuff under your breath about your parents. Murder, kidnapping, sodomy, fooling around with magic, violating the Sabbath, blasphemy, desecration, child sacrifice, contact with spirits, unlawful divorce, false prophecy, raping an engaged woman, and it goes on to about 30 or 35, and they required capital punishment, and so people and just sum all that up that I’ve said to you in about the last ten - fifteen minutes and you see why people say God is just too severe. I mean things kind of go along and every once in a while, just a whack upside the head and somebody just dies. It seems like it’s so arbitrary and so whimsical and so capricious. He kills one and let’s someone else live, and He doesn’t always enforce the death penalty, in some cases, yet He does enforce it in others."
Then there's two little boys, two young boys, I should say, they got all excited and do some kind of stupid and foolish thing, we really don’t even really know what it was that they did, but some kind of foolish thing in there, nonetheless and they die, and David goes on with women all over the place and commits fornication and adultery and he lives. Now listen, if you look at the Old Testament with the New Testament in view, you’re going to get confused because we live in an aura of the goodness and mercy and grace of God, and if you go back from that perspective, you’re going to get all confused in the Old Testament. The problem is we feel that God is unjust because we are comparing His justice with His mercy, but not His mercy with His law. Let me show you what I mean. But to get a clear picture, we have to go back to the beginning of creation. You cannot just look at the Old Testament from the New Testament perspective, you have to look at the Old Testament from the beginning of creation.
God said this, “In the day you eat of the fruit of the tree you shall surely” – what? – “die.” When God created, He said, you sin, you die. The New Testament reiterates the wages of sin is what? Death. The soul that sinneth, said Ezekiel, it shall die. You eat, you die. In creation, all sin was a capital offense. Any sin, God had a right to kill. Now, think of it this way: God made man freely. Created man of His own choice freely. He made man to glorify Him. He made man to radiate His image. He made man to manifest His person. But man rebelled. R. C. Sproul says he committed cosmic treason. Now, if God freely made man and God freely gave man his life and God freely gave man the conditions to continue that life, and man chose to violate that, then God had every right in the world to take that life back, right? After all, He gave it freely.
Whenever we sin, we are striking a blow at God’s Sovereign character. We are misrepresenting His image and His intention for us. We are insulting God and does not He who freely gave life have the Sovereign right to freely take it back if He set forth the conditions for it and we chose, yes, we chose, to violate them? Is that really so unfair? No, no, it's not. After all, He gave us the conditions, that would be just. So He has every right to take back the life He gave when that life violates His conditions. Am I right? I mean, Adam and Eve ate. Let me ask you a question: Did they die? No. No, they didn’t die. Did they get justice for their sin? No. So what did they get? Mercy. They received God's mercy. And at the moment that Adam and Eve sinned, God’s mercy was activated, and you know what else was activated? The plan of the cross. Because as soon as God was merciful to sinners, somebody had to take His justice, right? Do you see that? And the cross became a fixed reality. So that we could be saved from our sin. And people call God unfair? Unjust? Really?
So now, originally, every sin, and just stay with me here, every sin required death. Is it unjust by God’s law to take the life of the rebel to whom God has been so good? No. But God didn’t exercise His justice; He was merciful to Adam and Eve. Now just listen to me. By the time you come to the Mosaic law, you only have 30 to 35 capital offenses. That is not a cruel and unusual punishment, that is an amazing reduction in the severity of God’s judgment, now think about that, isn’t it? Because originally, it was any sin and now it’s just 30 to 35 of them, and who knows how many thousands there are. God is so merciful but by the time He gets to the Mosaic era, He’s reduced it to 30 to 35. And you know something else? Even in the case of those 30 to 35, there were times when God did not enact His justice. There were times when the people of Israel did all of those things and God spared their lives. He was merciful.
Wherever there was adultery in a marriage, there was supposed to be death, every time, but because they were so adulterous all the time, God permitted them to divorce as a gracious, merciful alternative to the original judgement. And they were to die for idolatry, but how many times did God forgive that idolatry? And how many times was He merciful? They were to die when they were committing fornication, but how many times did God show His patience? They were to die when they murdered, but how many times did God seem to overlook it? He was so patient, so patient. And still is, with each and every one of us. How dare any of us claim God is unfair or unjust? I mean, just look at all the mercy, forgiveness and patience He extends toward us every day...Stop, for a moment and just look at that.
Beloved, that is the point. If you compare the Old Testament with the original created standard, the Old Testament is full of mercy. Now just hear me out. But we are just so used to His mercy, we are so used to grace, we are so accustomed to getting away with our sin, day after day, we are so used to God not punishing us, we are so accustomed to His loving grace, that we abuse it, and whenever God does do what is just, we think, Wow, He’s unjust. That’s how messed up and confused we are, and that’s how we despise the goodness of God. We only look at the time He enforces what he warned of in the first place. When God knocks down in death Ananias and Sapphira, we say, "Well, how can God be so cruel?" When the fact is, how could anybody else in that congregation stay alive? They were all sinners. You see, we so tread on God’s mercy, and we’re so used to abusing God’s grace, that we are actually offended if God isn’t merciful toward us, and that is just the plain truth. All because He chooses times not to be merciful. One time, out of a hundred million times, and we focus on that one time. That's messed up.
In Closing.....
I know that some of you are probably saying to yourselves, "Well, I still just don’t understand why He does it. It really isn't fair." Just listen, I’ll tell you why. Because it’s so bad now and we trample all over His mercy and we abuse His grace so horribly now that if He didn’t give us those frequent examples of His justice, imagine how much more we would trample on His mercy without any fear of repercussion. The reason is pretty simple, that God from time to time takes a life and comes down in severe judgment is because periodically throughout the flow of redemptive history, He has to illustrate to us, what should happen, to bring us back to our senses because we are so accustomed to taking advantage of His goodness and mercy. I mean, if we didn’t have those examples of the consequence of sin, we would just go on blissfully sinning without a second thought to His mercy.
Now wouldn't we? Wouldn't we?
So I'll leave you with this thought: God's hand is forced, by our sinful actions, to remind us, now and then what we should be getting, what we actually deserve for what we're doing. If we didn't keep sinning, if we were only obedient to His Word, He wouldn't have to remind us, would He. Just think about that...
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
Brian Monzon Ministries