"Patience for God's Promises" - 2 Samuel 5:1-12

What can you learn from looking closely at David's patience for God's promises?

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Transcript

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On Cedar Street again, I love you so very much. It's my joy that we could all be together here this morning, and good morning to those watching on live stream as well. We are in the month of March and we're not turning back as we get closer and closer to Easter and the pollen is starting to pile up. Uh, it's that time of year again. And um, I'm just grateful we could be on this journey together. If you if you missed last week, we entered into a new sermon series. You may be able to see that on the screen as we're gonna be looking at the book of 2 Samuel. Our series is entitled Faithful and Flawed, as we look at the life of King David, and we're mindful that he was a man of great faith who ran after God's own heart, but also a man of great flaws who ran after God's amazing grace. And um, and also he is a great king that points us to the better and perfect King Jesus, who we need in our lives. I am grateful that we can walk through this together. David's been an inspiration to me for so long. Talked about that a lot last week. Uh I mentioned last week that a lot of scholars look at the life of King David, and you're gonna see this week after week as we look at this together, that his life is like the pitch of a roof in 2 Samuel. The first ten chapters, we were at chapter 1 last week, we're gonna look at chapter 5 today. You see he begins to reign over Israel, and he gets to this absolute uh peak where he is just faithfully walking with God, and then this egregious sin that he commits, the sin of adultery that leads to an accessory to murder, and then all of a sudden his life is a downward pitch as well. But I want to say this as we walk through the whole series together, we can learn as much about his flaws as we can do about his faith. But right now, as we're on the uptick of the roof pitch here in 2 Samuel 5, we're gonna learn a word that does not come easy to any of us. You can tell by the title of the message, as we look at 2 Samuel 5, verses 1 through 12, it's patience for God's promises. Patience for God's promises. Now, I don't care what church or denomination you're from, this is a universal joke among all Christians. What is the one thing people tell you to never pray for? Patience. Why? Because it's a prayer that God cannot wait to answer. He is impatient about answering your prayer for patience. And we know that when you ask for patience, God does not grant you a supernatural power. He puts you in a position where you are dependent upon his grace, and that is how patience is learned because it's not about willpower, it is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Remember? Love, joy, peace, patience. It's one of the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5. Now, why is it so hard? If we know it's the prayer that we shouldn't pray because it's a powerful prayer and God wants us to have it, what makes patience, specifically spiritual patience for God's promises, what makes it so hard? You think about it for just a minute. Well, first and foremost, we live in an instantaneous gratification society. If I can't have it right now, it's not worth having. You know, as we get faster and faster and faster, patience for the promises of God gets harder and harder and harder. And in the waiting, when God makes us wait for things that we don't enable people to make us wait for, we get irritated, we get frustrated. God begins to show what's happening beneath the surface in the human heart. So we get irritated because we're an instantaneous gratification society. But I will also say this: when we get impatient, we show many times a lack of trust in what God is doing in the suffering as we wait, and a lack of trust that He's going to do what He said He will do. We struggle to trust God. Patience is an issue of trust. All right, those who walk in faith and grow in their trust, they celebrate the promises being fulfilled before they are. Faith is the evidence of things not seen. It's so rooted in hope, it's as if you could have it already. You tasted and experienced it already. And that comes out of intimacy and relationship with God. I want you to get this today as we walk through this. Okay, David's not a perfect man. Again, the series is called Faithful and Flawed. But if you read the Psalms and you read what is said about David in 1 Samuel as he first jumps on the scene, over and over and over, it's said that David is a man after God's own heart. He is a man pursuing a personal, intimate relationship with God. And that is the only place where true patience for his promises can come. In the kingdom of God, we don't take matters into our own hands. We don't bring the kingdom by force. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. I will repay. Our job is to be faithful in the waiting. Easier said than done. But it comes out of this relationship. And we're going to see a pattern and a process of learning the fruit of patience. It is not by willpower, it is a fruit of the Spirit. But yet we can watch how David walked with God, and we can enter into that process. We can cling close to him. We can remember the things that he's already done for us and let that be the fuel of hope that keeps us trusting and patiently waiting for the promises to come. So what's our big idea as we look at 2 Samuel chapter 5, verses 1 through 12? Here it is. David's patience for the fulfillment of God's promises reveals his faithful trust in God's kingdom plan. David's patience for the fulfillment of God's promises reveals his faithful trust in God's kingdom plan. So if you want to know more how you and I can join David in having patience for God's promises, join me by turning to the book of 2 Samuel. 2 Samuel, if you're new to the Bible, it's in the Old Testament. It's after 1 Samuel, it's before 1 Kings. If you don't have a Bible, just grab the Pew Bible in front of you or beside you. We're on page 303 in your Pew Bible. And if you would stand at this time, out of the reverence of the reading of God's holy, infallible, inerrant, and fully sufficient word, we are in 2 Samuel chapter 5, starting in verse 1. Hear God's word to us. Then all the tribes of Israel came to David David at Hebron and said, Behold, we are your bone and flesh. In times past, when Saul was king over us, it was you who led us out and brought in Israel. And the Lord said to you, You shall be shepherd of my people Israel, and you shall be prince over Israel. So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron. And King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel. David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. At Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months, and at Jerusalem he reigned over all Israel in Judah thirty-three years. And the king and his men went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, who said to David, You will not come in here, but the blind and the lame will ward you off, thinking David cannot come in here. Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion, that is the city of David. And David said on that day, Whoever would strike the Jebusites, let him get up the watershaft to attack the lame and the blind, who are hated by David's soul. Therefore it is said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house. And David lived in the stronghold and called it the city of David. And David built the city all around from the Milo inward. And David became greater and greater, for the Lord, the God of hosts, was with him. Verse eleven. And Hiram, king of Tyre, sent messengers to David and cedar trees and carpenters and masons who built David a house. And David knew that the Lord had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for the sake of his people. Let's pray together. Oh Lord, we love you and thank you for this day. We thank you for our time together here this morning. Lord, we we all know how incredibly difficult, yea, impossible it is to be patient without your help. It is not a fruit of human willpower. It's not a fruit of determination. It is a fruit of the Spirit. That can only happen by your grace. But at the same time, Lord, we know that we play a role in that. We have to surrender to you and enter into this process. And so, Lord, I pray, I pray that today would be super practical. That we recognize it's all by your grace, but we play the role. We play the role of seeking you and remembering you and praising you and thanking you and listening to you and walking with you as we wait for you. So, Lord, be with us. I pray that the words that are spoken would not return void. They would accomplish what they are set out to do by your power and your anointing, and they'd find lodging in our hearts, Lord. That we would learn to be more patient towards your promises when we leave this place than when we walked in this morning. Be with us right now, I pray. In Jesus' name, and God's people said. Amen. So if you missed last week, or if you're new to the scriptures and you've never read 2 Samuel, let me just say last week was chapter 1. And in the beginning of chapter 1, the first official king of Israel, King Saul, dies by the sword, and a new regime is coming. And that's King David. And last week we talked about grieving for God's kingdom. That even though Saul was the sworn enemy of David, Saul chased David all over the place. For many years, he was living in caves and serving in enemy territories. All these things that Saul did, and yet when Saul dies, David's first move is not to celebrate. David's first move is to grieve because he was about the will of the Father and he was about the kingdom of God. And I said last week how hard it is for us to celebrate when God does something good, but it's not for our personal benefit, and maybe even to the benefit of our enemies, how difficult that can be. So that was last week. Now we we skip ahead to chapter 5, and in chapters 2 through 4, David is officially anointed king, but he doesn't take over all of Israel at first. He takes over a portion of Judah, all right, in the area of Hebron. Some pronounce it Hebron, Hebron. I've heard two different pronunciations. I think both are acceptable, but he takes over at Hebron, and he is there for seven and a half years, and God blesses it. But he has not taken over all of Israel, and he has not entered into the capital city of Israel that we know as Jerusalem, and that's where we are here in chapter 5, where the fullness of David's reign takes center stage. All that God had promised him was finally coming to fruition. And David models for us in this passage the fruit of waiting on God patiently for his promises to be fulfilled. So through this, I want to look at three specific promises. In these 12 verses, again, I'm just going to take out some key words, some key thoughts for us to think about. And I want to be practical. I want you to be thinking about your own life right now. How does this apply to right where you are right now? Because no matter where you are, if you're still here on this earth, you're living by faith and not by sight. You do not have the fullness of God's promises yet. We live in what scholars call the already and the not yet. There's many things that have already happened, many things God has already declared, but the not yet is we have not experienced the fullness of those promises, and we won't until Christ returns. And so we have to learn to be patient. So I want to look at this together and look at three ways that we can learn from David. So number one, as you look at verses one through five, David patiently waited for God's promised throne. God's promised throne. Now in verse two, if you keep your Bibles open, I want to show you a few key words. Okay, in verse two, it says, In times past, when Saul was king over us, okay, the people of Israel are acknowledging the anointing of David. It says, It was you who led out and brought in Israel, and the Lord said to you, You shall be my be shepherd of my people Israel, and you shall be prince over Israel. They are acknowledging that David is taking over a throne that God had already prepared for him. Now, you and I can read this and not fully understand the timeline, so let me just speak in general terms. Scholars believe it was twenty years from the moment that Samuel went into the wilderness to anoint David king over Israel when he was a shepherd, the youngest of Jesse's sons. It was two decades, twenty years from the moment of that anointing till the moment that he takes the fullness of his throne over all Israel in the capital city of Jerusalem. Twenty years from God saying, This is yours, to God saying, Now take what I have provided for you. Twenty years. And all that time he wasn't just sitting poolside waiting for God to do his work. No, he was on the run for most of it. First of all, he was serving a king that hated his guts, but he was serving faithfully. And then when the king turned on him, he was hiding and living in enemy territory and wondering what was going to happen next. And yet he had opportunities. If you remember in 1 Samuel, several opportunities to take the life of Saul and take what God had already promised him. And he said over and over and over, I will not harm the Lord's anointed. In other words, I'm not going to have God's promises on my terms. I'm going to trust that God will do what God has promised on his timeline and not mine. And finally, after two decades, he receives the fullness. And something else that is so important, I want you to hear this. As he is taking the throne, he doesn't have to stand up with a megaphone and explain to everybody that he's God's chosen. No, he allowed God to open their eyes and recognize the anointing that was on him. I think about this. There's a passage in the book of Joshua, and I've used it for several ordination services. Whenever I'm privileged to be part of an ordination service, I'll mention this because I think it's super important for those that are ordained to the ministry to allow God to affirm that calling. In Joshua chapter 3, verse 7, in the nation of Israel, as transition is taking place from Moses to Joshua, first of all, nobody wants to be Joshua. You don't want to follow the guy. You want to be the guy that follows the guy that follows the guy. But who wants to follow Moses? Alright, Joshua has to follow Moses, but God makes this promise. And in Joshua 3.7, he says, This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may know that I will be with you as I was with Moses. God says, I've called you to this. I'm going to bring you through this. You don't have to stand on the corner with a megaphone. You don't have to let everybody know you're anointed. You don't have to prove that you're called. You walk with me, and I will open their eyes to see that as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. That's what he says to Joshua. Well, the same is true for David. David does not have to go out to everyone and say, guys, you need to know this. I was anointed by the prophet Samuel. I was promised a throne. I know Saul is gone, but just in case you don't know, here's my resume. Consider this when you guys call a committee meeting. I am the next king of Israel. He doesn't say anything, he watches and he waits. And again, for the first seven and a half years, he's reigning over a portion of the kingdom. But seven and a half years later, he enters into the capital city and takes the fullness of his reign, and he is not the one who made that happen. He was surrendered to the promises of God, and he learned two decades of patiently waiting for God to unfold his plan. Now, I don't know your situation. Everybody in this room is different. Chronologically, you're all different ages. Spiritually, you're all at different places. But I know this, as I look around this room, every single one of you has received or experienced something that took a long time to wait for. And sometimes we forget so much about all the things that God has already given us, and all we focus on is the thing that God has not given us. Maybe there's something huge right now you're waiting for God to give you. Maybe it's the job that you've been working for your whole life. Maybe it's a spouse that you know God has put on this planet for you. Maybe it's having a child. Maybe it's graduating or going to a school that you've always wanted to get into. Now, I can't promise you that God has said yes or no to those things. That's between you and God. I can say this: as you're waiting for this big promise over here, can you remember all the promises God has already fulfilled to bring you to this point? Why do we forget so quickly? We're so frustrated at what God's doing right now, making us wait for something that we really want. We forget an entire span of time where God has been so faithful and God has answered in so many ways. You know, there are so many times that I'll be with someone who I'll find start to complain about their life, and I'll look at them and think, you wouldn't want to trade lives with me. You wouldn't want to trade lives with me because you're complaining over what you don't have, but there's about 15 things I can tell you right now that you do have that I don't. Do you want to trade lives? But as soon as I want to get down to the dumps and play, you know, pity me, sorry me, I can also be in the presence of someone and recognize that God has given me things that He hasn't given them. God is always at work. He is such a good provider. He blesses us far beyond anything that we can ever dare ask or think of. This is the God that we serve. And if you and I are growing impatient for something we want to happen right now, maybe it's because you have forgotten his faithfulness to you up until this point. You know, sometimes when things get tight financially, I tell myself, I'm 45 years old. From where I was to where I am right now, God has done so many different things. Would he bring me all the way to where I am right now and say, I brought you as far as I could bring you, Bo. It's all up to you now. Fend for yourself. No, the God that has brought me right where I am right now, I have not missed a meal. I've got clothes on my back, I've got a roof over my head, I've got a vehicle that still runs on grace, but it runs, that same God is not gonna make me go without. Now, he may withhold things I really desire. Because either A, he's got something better, or B, he's gonna grow me in the waiting. The same is true with you. So maybe if you came into the house of God today and you're really frustrated, you're getting impatient, you know, one of the things you can do is sit quietly with God and pull out a journal and a pen and med and just write down the things that he has already done for you. And as Eddie wonderfully mentioned in the Psalms, praise him. Thank him. Be to him as you would want one of your children or grandchildren to be to you. What would you do if you went home today after lunch and your child or your grandchild sat down next to you on the couch and said, You know, I've just been thinking over and over about all the things you've done for me. And they started naming one after the other of what you've done for them. And they just said, Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. You wouldn't know what to do. You would not know what to do. Well, God does know what to do, He's worthy of our praise, he accepts our praise. Let's praise him while we're waiting. Let's learn from David, who took a promised throne, but he waited 20 years to do it. We can wait for the things God has appointed to us. It will happen in his time, for his purposes, if we trust him. That's number one. David patiently waited for God's promised throne. Number two, as you look at verses six through nine, David patiently waited for God's promised city. All right, as you look at verses six through nine, it says in verse seven, it says, Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion, that is, the city of David. Okay? We'll talk about that in a second. And in verse 9, if you skip down, it says again, and David lived in the stronghold and called it the city of David, and David built the city around from the Milo inward. So the capital city of the holy land is a sacred place. All right, God promised this land to Israel. If you read the book of Genesis, you see obviously they left the promised land in the book of Genesis, and they had to go to Egypt and they survived the famine, and then Moses is called to bring them back to this promised land of Canaan, this land of milk and honey. And then you see through the book of Joshua, they start taking captive the land, and then you see in the judges they start settling into the land, and now they're in the need of a king. So the capital city of the land, this is a sacred place. All right, the city of Jerusalem. Now let me just say this. I'm not a politician, I'm not making a political statement, I'm just stating fact. I don't care what your political view is, this. Whenever the world comes to an end, however the world comes to an end, you keep your eyes on Jerusalem. Because that is the epicenter of the beginning, the middle, and the end of when God does what God does. He has put his fingerprints on that city in a way that he's not on any other city on planet earth. It's just the truth. It is a sacred, sacred city. And God appointed that for Israel. And David, the first seven and a half years of his reign, he's reigning over Judah, but now he's going to take the fullness of what God promised him, and he's entering into a city that from that moment on into eternity is known as a city of David. A man after God's own heart, a city appointed for him to reign. And we remember to this day it's the city of David. In fact, in the new heavens and new earth, when the heaven up there comes down here, the holy city of heaven is going to come right on top of the holy city here on earth, and we will be living in what's called the New Jerusalem. What a promise. That's a promise worth waiting for. That's sooner than you think. But just like he did not take the throne by force, he waited until the time was right to recapture and reclaim the city that God had prepared for him. Okay, he could, from the moment he got anointed king over Judah, he could have got the boys together and said, let's go take what's ours, and he would have gotten ahead of God's plan. What was God doing in those seven and a half years before he took the city of Jerusalem? I don't know for sure, but I know this, it wasn't wasted time. Maybe you're getting really close to God's something, there's something God's promised you, and between now and the moment that you receive it, you feel like it's just you're wasting time. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is wasted. God has something in place for you. I I thought about this a lot this week. So I had a desire. I've been a 90-year-old man and a young body my whole life. I'm just an old man. I always have been. My mother used to call me her little old man. I've been wearing suits since second grade. I have proof in my phone if you ever want to see it. Okay, I'm just an old man. I have always wanted to be settled. And yet in my 20s, when I entered into sports casting, God would not let me lay roots. And I had this growing frustration. I wanted to have a city that I could call my home. I wanted to put my suitcases in the closet. I remember my first full year out of college in broadcasting. I got hired by the Daytona Cubs, and I actually made an agreement with the management there because I had just enough money to get a U-Haul down there, but I had no money for a down payment on an apartment. I asked if I could sleep in the stadium clubhouse. I thought, man, this is great. 23 years old sleeping at a stadium. This is going to be awesome. It was not awesome. My first weekend there, I'll never forget it, it was in the wintertime. It was a Saturday morning. I thought, nobody's going to bother me. I'm going to sleep in and then just wake up and just hang out in a ballpark all day. This is going to be great. 7.30 in the morning. 7.30 in the morning, a neighboring school you may have heard of, Bethune Cookman College, that has a band of about 300, had band practice at the stadium. I'm half asleep and I hear. And I just, I thought, okay, this probably is not going to work out well. I had to remove billboards that were taken off the wall and put in the shower just so that I could take a shower in the morning. And I just remember thinking, okay, I just want this season to start. And then when I got an apartment in state in Daytona, it was such a tourist town. It's fun to visit. It's not as much fun to live. I just wanted to get to the next town. And I moved to California and I was only there a year and just didn't feel at home. And so I moved back to Georgia, then I moved back to Pennsylvania, then I moved back to Georgia. And I just longed to be, I guess, right where I am right now. I've been in Metter now since 2009, minus my time at seminary, and I believe this is as close as I'm going to feel to a home here on earth until I get to my heavenly home. But as I was putting the message together, I was mindful of how long it took for me to find a city that I could call my home. Maybe some of you are there right now. Maybe Metter is not your home, but it's a transition to where God has you to be, and you're getting impatient. I don't know. But I know this. My time from that first night in a clubhouse in Daytona to where I am today in Metter, it was not wasted time. I was not ready. I was not ready. For those of you that are this close to a promise God has made, the reason you don't have it is you're just not ready yet. Wait just a little bit longer faithfully for God to answer the promises that He's made in your life. Something to think about. And that leads me to my final point, third and finally. David patiently waited, not just for God's promised throne and God's promised city, but this is huge. This sums the whole thing up. David patiently waited for God's promised presence. Listen to verses 10 through 12. And David became greater and greater, for the Lord, the God of hosts, was with him. And Hiram, king of Tyre, sent messengers to David and cedar trees, also carpenters and masons who built David a house. And David knew that the Lord had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for the sake of his people, Israel. Verse 10 says, David became greater and greater and greater, for the Lord was with him. And then it says in verse 12 that he knew the Lord had established him, and that the Lord had exalted his kingdom for the sake of his people. He is acknowledging he is experiencing a powerful anointing and relational presence of God in his life. He learned to wait on the power and presence of God. It is so obvious when you read the Psalms. How all those years in the caves and running from Saul and waiting for God to bring safety and waiting for God to provide the next meal, all of those things told him to trust that God was going to be present in his life. Psalm 27, 14, David says, wait for the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord. He learned to wait. And he learned what happens when you do wait. And he also learns what happens when you don't. Do you remember in 1 Samuel why it is that Saul was removed as king? He was told to make a sacrifice. Or he was told not, excuse me, he was told not to make a blood sacrifice, but to wait for Samuel to make the sacrifice on behalf of Israel. And he did not wait long enough. And he did the sacrifice himself. And Samuel said in 1 Samuel 13, You're foolish. I will take this kingdom from you and I will give it to a man after my own heart. David learned to wait, but it was a painful lesson on learning to wait. And that is why, by the way, David can say these words that you know by heart. In Psalm 23, verse 4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. He was not going to move without the power and the presence and the anointing of God on his life. Now, this is key. I've mentioned this before. In the Old Testament, before the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the time of Pentecost when the church was established, the Holy Spirit was always at work, but the Holy Spirit was among the people. The Holy Spirit was sometimes beside the people. The Holy Spirit worked on behalf of the people. The Holy Spirit temporarily filled and moved in the lives of people. But after Pentecost, the Holy Spirit lives inside of you as a believer. You don't ever have to worry if the Holy Spirit is with you on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, He will never leave you, He will never forsake you. Once He moves in, He's not moving out. However, we can also say at the same time that there are certain moments where you and I experience a special filling of the Holy Spirit, a special empowering of the Holy Spirit, a special anointing of the Holy Spirit. And those are the moments that you and I have got to wait for. You don't produce those by human effort. You don't produce those by getting excited and hooting and hollering until you work yourself up into a lather. It has to be a work of God. It has to be a work of God. Like I said back in Joshua, Joshua God had to open the eyes of Israel to see that Joshua was the chosen one. So whatever God's called you to, can you wait for God to affirm you instead of affirming yourself? Can you trust that He's going to be present with you in a very, very special way? Can you wait? Can you wait on the presence of God? The way David did. Let me sum it up in this way as we draw to a close. David's patience for God's promises points us to Jesus, who ultimately fulfills every divine promise with an eternal yes. Again, David's patience for God's promises points us to Jesus, who ultimately fulfills every divine promise with an eternal yes. 2 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 20, Paul says, inspired of the Holy Spirit, he says, For all the promises of God find their yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our amen to God for his glory. A summarized shortened way of saying it is all the promises of God find their yes and amen in Jesus. They really do. When you look at the Bible, I want you to think of Jesus as the ocean and every promise of God as a river that eventually is running to the ocean. There will come a time where every single solitary promise that God has made will find its yes in Jesus Christ. We're just not there yet. But you can trust him now for the promises that are to come. You can look at his word and see all the promises that he has already fulfilled, but you can also look at your own life in everything God has done to bring you to this point, and you can either complain about what not is not yet happened, or you can praise him for what has already happened. I'm going with option B. And I pray that you would join me in that. You know, as we close, I'll say this. Earlier this month, we were challenged by Jim and Shelley about witnessing to at least one person that God has placed on our hearts. Instantly, as they said that, I was reminded of a person that I've been witnessing to and praying for for a long time. Friday, without even trying, I crossed paths with that person for the first time in almost a year, and we talked for 30 minutes. And then that person sent me a text message and said, It's just good to connect with you. Let's stay in touch. I thought to myself, you don't know this, but you got a you got a flower coming your way come Easter Sunday. Absolutely. When you start praying and you start asking for God to move, He will move in your life. You just may not see it right away. But again, when you can't see what's happening in the present, remember what he's done in the past. Let's not have amnesia over all the ways that God has blessed us, because you're going to see at the end of your life how he reconciled the issues that you have right now. It's who he is. And David can help us. He can help us to learn to patiently wait on God's promises. But I say this as we pray if Jesus is the yes and amen to all the promises of God, and your heart is not surrendered to his lordship, you will not be able to taste and experience all those promises. In fact, you will be on the wrong side of those promises. One of the reasons that Jesus has not come back yet is he's waiting for the good news of the gospel to get to all four corners of the earth. And the gospel is good news that Jesus did everything necessary for you and I to have a relationship with God. You should have this memorized by now. I've said it every Sunday for almost ten years. He lived perfectly the way that we should have lived but couldn't. He died sacrificially to take the punishment that we deserved. He rose from the dead, making a way from death to life. He ascended to the Father to send down his Holy Spirit, and he's coming back to judge the living and the dead and make all things new. You know the interesting thing about the gospel? Four fifths of that's already been fulfilled. Why can't we trust him for the fifth one? He lived, praise him, he died, praise him, he arose, praise him, he ascended and sent down his Holy Spirit, praise him. I don't know if he's gonna come back. Well, he did the first four. Why can't we trust him for the fifth? And until he comes back, why can't you trust him with the issues in your life right now? He's worthy. Wait on the Lord. He is worthy to wait on because his promises find their yes in Jesus. Let's pray. Lord, we forget so quickly everything you've done for us in our lives, everything you've done to bring us right to this moment. We are a forgetful people. And we need to be mindful, Lord. I just pray right now, in the name of Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that whatever struggles we brought into this room, that we would leave them at your feet. That we would trust you for our future because of what you have done for us in our past. And what you have revealed is our eternity because of your Son. Be with us right now, I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.